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Queen Elizabeth as Diana 



THE 



QUEENS 

PROGRESS 

AND 

Other Elizabethan Sketches 



By Felix E. Schelling 



Omnia rerum omnium^ si observentur, indicia 
sunt et argumentum morum ex minimis quoque 
licet cap ere. 

Senec. Epist. 52. 12. 



BOSTON & NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 

1 904 



4? 



Vug Couics Rerstved 

OCT 10 1904 
A Cooyrfsrht Entry 

6teA 3, /^<* 

CLASS G_ XXo. No. 
'COPY B 



COPYRIGHT 1904 BY FELIX E. SCHELLING 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October IQ04 



V 



dr 



<^* 



The following sketches — for they claim 
to be no more — are some of the lighter 
matters that have floated on a stream 
of reading and study which has already carried, 
let it he hoped, a somewhat weightier freight. 
It is one thing to taste the charm and flavor of 
an age ; it is another to convey it. The days 
of Elizabeth and fames were nothing if not 
multiform. Their trivialities even have their 
place, and their power to complete the picture, 
whether historical or literary : a power not al- 
ways apprehended in view of the number and 
variety of the important figures that crowd 
the spacious canvas of that incomparable time. 
When Ben fonson jotted in his commonplace- 
book the things which took his fancy as he read 
or the thoughts which rose in his mind touching 
certain human actions, he called his notes " dis- 
coveries made upon men and mattery Later 

came 



VI 



came the appraiser with his stylus and inventory 
of good things and of bad. Here is neither ap- 
praisement nor discovery ; but the object simply 
written down as it appears to him who writes 
to-day ; more truly seen, let us trust, than yester- 
day : perchance in need of more light from a 
clearer to-morrow. 





vii 


Contents 




i. The Queen's Progress . . . Page i 




ii. An Elizabethan Will . . . . 27 




in. Thomas Stucley, Gentleman Ad- 




venturer 49 




iv. An Old-Time Friendship . . 75 




v. "An Aery of Children, Little 




Eyases" 103 




vi. A Groatsworth of Wit . . .129 




vii. Plays in the Making . . . .149 




viii. When Music and Sweet Poetry 




agree 171 




ix. Thalia in Oxford 201 




x. A Journey to the North . . .221 




Index 253 







ix 


Illustrations 




Queen Elizabeth as Diana . Frontispiece 




From the picture in the collection of the Marquess 




of Salisbury, at Hatfield House 




By permission of Gonpil & Co. 




The Masque of Zabeta .... Page 22 




Queen Elizabeth, Juno, Venus, and Minerva. From 




the picture in the royal collection of Hatfield Court 




By permission of Gonpil & Co. 




Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke . . 78 


• 


After the original in the collection of Willoughby 




de Broke 




Edward Alleyn, Founder of Dulwick 




College 156 




After the original in Dulwick College 




Ben Jonson 224 


^ 


From the painting after Honthorst, in the National 




Portrait Gallery 




William Drummond 242 




After the miniature at Hawthornden 





THE %pEEN'S PROGRESS 




The Queen's Progress 



It has been said that the character of the 
great Queen Elizabeth can be painted 
only in high lights ; that if there were 
shadows in her nature, there were no depths ; 
or at least that, if there were once depths, 
so consummate a mistress of deception and 
subterfuge had she become that it is idle to 
enquire if she were ever sincere. Brilliant, 
accomplished and imperious, tortuous in 
details, unscrupulous in choice of means to 
an end as her master Machiavelli himself 
almost, this latest daughter of the Italian 
Renaissance preserved — again like Machia- 
velli — a largeness of design in her political 

doings 



4 



The Queen's Progress 



doings which often raises them from the 
pettiness of intrigue to the wider domain 
of statesmanship. It was the recognition 
of this which kept men like Sir Nicholas 
Bacon, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the 
Cecils her servants and councillors. But 
despite her haughty, unreasonable temper, 
her vanity and susceptibility to gross flattery, 
her mendacity, and her meanness in money 
affairs, there must have been something in 
Elizabeth as a woman to hold to her such 
men as Sidney, Spenser, and Raleigh, and 
to beget in them that choice spirit in which 
were mingled patriotic loyalty to a queen 
who embodied in her person the glory of 
England, and a chivalric devotion to ideal 
womanhood, each ennobling and dignifying 
the other. Years after Elizabeth's death so 
grave a man as Camden, the antiquarian, 
could write : " She was of admirable beauty 
and well deserving a crown, of modest grav- 
ity, excellent wit, royal soul, happy mem- 
ory, 



The Queen's Progress 



ory, and indefatigably given to the study of 
learning/ ' 

Whatever else may have been true of 
Queen Elizabeth, she had a genius for so- 
ciety. Her judgment, her tact, in all that 
pertained to the daily intercourse of the 
sovereign with her Court, her Parliament, 
or her people, was unerring. The skill with 
which she passed from the gravity of the 
council-chamber to a flirtation with Alen- 
con or a galliard prearranged for the Span- 
ish minister to witness her Majesty dancing 
unawares, was "an admiration to behold." 
For the wise counsellor, the witty courtier, 
the dull citizen, or the duller college pedant, 
Elizabeth had ever the proper answer or the 
ready retort. She could be gracious if she 
chose after a sore infliction of the inordi- 
nate length and preternatural learning of 
an Elizabethan sermon. She could reply, 
with many graceful womanish qualms as 
to the quality of her Latinity, in a carefully 

unprepared 



The Queer? s Progress 



unprepared speech, to learned addresses by 
the heads, dons, or scholars of Oxford or 
Cambridge. She could frighten her Com- 
mons, in language fit for a fishwife, into 
the obsequious granting of her subsidies 
against their will ; arouse by her eloquence 
the untutored train-bands at Tilbury to a 
frenzy of martial ardor ; or cap an epigram 
which a saucy courtier had scratched on the 
window-pane for her Majesty's eye. Fond 
of pleasure and display, thirsty for praise 
that might be interpreted to come as the 
unsought tribute of her beauty or accom- 
plishment as a woman, Elizabeth none the 
less maintained, through many deviations 
and some vicissitude, the attitude of a 
queen, beloved by her people, and re- 
spected and feared abroad. How far she 
was merely a consummate actress, how far a 
woman, weak in all her strength, pathetic 
despite her queenly station, must be left for 
each to decide for himself. Certain it is 

that 



The Queen* s Progress 



that if Elizabeth was an actress, she had the 
world for her stage and marvelling Christ- 
endom for her auditors. 

Like her father before her, the Queen 
was an enthusiastic lover of pomp and dis- 
play. There was scarcely an action of her 
life from the trifling forms of the daily 
routine at Court to the dignified ceremo- 
nials of sovereignty which was not studied 
for its effect. Hentzner, a contemporary 
German traveller, has described the Queen's 
passage through the presence chamber of 
her palace at Greenwich on her way to 
morning service in her chapel. Somewhat 
shortened, his words run : — 

" First went gentlemen, barons, earls, 
Knights of the Garter, all richly dressed 
and bareheaded; next came the Chancellor, 
bearing the seals in a red silk purse, be- 
tween two, one of which carried the Royal 
sceptre, the other the sword of state, in a 
red scabbard, studded with golden fleurs de 

lis, 



8 The Queen's Progress 

lis, the point upwards : next came the 
Queen, very majestic ; her face oblong, fair, 
but wrinkled ; her eyes small, yet black 
and pleasant ; her nose a little hooked ; her 
lips narrow; she had in her ears two pearls 
with very rich drops ; she wore false hair, 
and that red; upon her head she had a 
small crown ; her bosom was uncovered 
as all the English ladies have it till they 
marry, and she had on a necklace of ex- 
ceeding fine jewels ; her hands were small, 
her fingers long, and her stature neither 
tall nor low; her air was stately, her man- 
ner of speaking mild and obliging. As she 
went along in all this state and magnifi- 
cence, she spoke very graciously, first to 
one, then to another, whether foreign Min- 
isters or those who attended for different 
reasons, in English, French, and Italian ; 
for, besides being well skilled in Greek, 
Latin, and the languages I have mentioned, 
she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and 

Dutch. 



The Queen's Progress 



Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneel- 
ing ; now and then she raises some with 
her hand. Wherever she turned her face, as 
she was going along, everybody fell down 
on their knees. The ladies of the Court 
followed next to her, very handsome and 
well-shaped, and for the most part dressed 
in white. She was guarded on each side by 
the gentlemen pensioners, fifty in number, 
with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel 
next the hall where we were, petitions 
were presented to her, and she received 
them most graciously, which occasioned 
the acclamation of 'Long live Queen Eliza- 
beth ! ' She answered it with ' I thank you, 
my good people/ " 

It was amid stately and ceremonious 
scenes such as this that Elizabeth drank in 
the adulation so dear to every sovereign and 
every woman's heart; for in popular accla- 
mation she must have found justification 
for the sinuousness and insincerity of a polit- 
ical 



io The Queen's Progress 

ical policy which could not but have preyed 
on a conscience even so robust as her own. 
It was, moreover, in the midst of such 
scenes that she found a solace for that 
loneliness which fate and her royal deter- 
mination had decreed for her, and which 
ever attended her greatness like its shadow. 
Orations, songs and poems of welcome 
and farewell, allegorical groups, arches, 
and decorations, processions, plays, morali- 
ties and masques were Elizabeth's delight, 
and continued such to the end. It may be 
surmised that far more of the success of the 
earlier Elizabethan drama than is usually 
supposed is due to this taste of the Queen, 
which offered an example for the fash- 
ionable world to follow and afforded an 
excuse for the existence of theatrical com- 
panies by royal or other patronage. Of 
these varied amusements the " progress " 
was high in the royal favor. It combined 
several distinct advantages : amongst them a 

change 



The Queen's Progress 



1 1 



change of scene, opportunity for the dis- 
play of loyalty and hospitality on the part 
of the Queen's host, and, counting by no 
means least in the estimation of her prudent 
Majesty, a material saving in her house- 
hold budget. Hence it was that Elizabeth 
was wont to " go on progress " in the sum- 
mer months, to sojourn with her loving 
subjects from a few days to weeks ; to pass 
from one to another, visit the provincial 
towns and the Universities, and enjoy a 
surfeit of feasting, adulation, allegorical 
pageantry and entertainment. According to 
the excellent antiquarian, John Nichols, 
nearly three hundred castles, towns, or 
country-seats were thus visited by the Queen 
and her Court, and some hundred and sixty 
of her more important subjects had at one 
time or another submitted to the glory and 
the charge of entertaining a royal guest, at 
times to their permanent impoverishment. 
To none of the progresses of Queen Eliz- 
abeth 



12 



The Queen's Progress 



abeth attaches a greater interest than to 
that during which she spent no less than 
nineteen days at Kenilworth Castle, the 
guest of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 
in July, 1575. The story of this progress 
has often been told by contemporaries, by 
antiquarians, and lastly and definitively by 
Sir Walter Scott, who has used the extant 
historical material to admirable advantage 
in his transfer of these brilliant scenes to the 
delightful pages of Kenilworth. Leicester 
was then at the height of the elaborate 
and subtile courtship which he paid to his 
sovereign through several years, sanguine 
of success, and eager in pursuit of the most 
difficult mistress that ever bade lover hope 
only to play with his despair. It required no 
little temerity to combine the role of sub- 
ject, lover and councillor to such a woman 
and to such a queen ; and a cleverer man 
than Leicester might well have been in- 
volved in the royal toils that were cease- 
lessly 



The Queen's Progress 1 3 

lessly weaving to the confusion, perplexity, 
and overreaching of foe and friend. An in- 
terest of a different kind has been assigned 
by some to this progress, from the possibility 
that the boy Shakespeare may have been 
present (as was the greater part of the popu- 
lation of Warwickshire at various times), 
and that he may have received — as others 
have been bold to surmise — from this ear- 
liest contact with pageantry and stage-craft 
the first strong impetus towards his future 
career. 

In the absence of an obsequious daily 
press to chronicle the goings and comings of 
royalty, we can imagine how impatiently the 
curious, whose station in life forbade attend- 
ance at Court, must have awaited the pam- 
phlet which was sure to appear describing 
the Queen's last progress. Laneham's Letter, 
Whearin part of the Entertainment untoo the 
Queenz Majesty at Killingworth Cast/ in War- 
wik Sheer in this Soomerz Progress iz signified, 

purports 



l + The Queen* s Progress 

purports to be no more than a private mes- 
sage to u hiz fireend a CitizeD and Merchaunt 

of London." It was, however, indubitably 

written tor the booksellers, and helped to 
swell the comfortable cotters of the lively 
and conceited little M dark " whose duties 
in office he thus describes: "Now, Sir, if 
the council sits, I am at hand ; wait at an 
inch, I warrant you. If any make babling : 
k Peace,' say I, ' wot ye where ye are ? ' If 
I take a listener or a prier in at the chinks 
or at the look-hole, I am by and by in the 
bones of him. If a be a friend or such a 
one as I like, I make him sit down by me 
on a form or a chest ; let the rest walk, a 
God's name." 

Laneham had the maggots of phonetic 
spelling in his brain, as the title ot his 
letter just given sufficiently shows. They 
need not infect us, as he had also "the 
power adays (while the council sits not) to 
go and to see things sightworthv and to be 

present 



The Queer? s Progress ■ 5 

present at any show or spectacle anywhere 
this progress represented unto her High- 
ness. 

The entertainments of a queen's prog 
were like the meals of the day — very sub- 
stantial affairs and of almost an equal va- 
riety. On the very first day her Majesty's 
power of endurance was thoroughly put 
to the test. Starting at noon from Isling- 
ton, a town some miles from Kenil worth, 
and hunting by the way, the Queen could 
scarcely have reached the privacy of her own 
apartments until ten o'clock that night. Be- 
tween the tilt-yard where she arrived about 
eight and the door of the castle alone, she 
ran the gauntlet of the speeches, music and 
posturing of ten sibyls, sundry porters, six 
trumpeters, Proteus, the Lady of the Lake, 
and " a poet in a long ceruleus garment" 
who stopped to explain — we may be sure 
with all the leisure of poets — a succession of 
pillars decorating the bridge and dedicated 

respectively 



1 6 The Queer? s Progress 

respectively to Sylvanus, Pomona, Ceres, 
Bacchus, Mars, and Phoebus, ending with 
a lengthy Latin inscription crowning the 
door itself. 

In the days that followed, all that princely 
expenditure could procure and inventive in- 
genuity could devise was lavished to produce 
novelty after novelty. There were ridings 
and hunting attended with enchanted music 
which spake out of trees and hedges ; unex- 
pected meetings in the woods with fauns 
and savage men, who discoursed elegant al- 
legory ; tilting in the tilt-yard and graceful 
dancing of lords and ladies in the presence. 
There were feats of agility, mock rights 
and bear-baiting by day, and masques in the 
hall and fireworks on the lake at night. 
These last made a deep impression upon 
Laneham, who records how " the Altito- 
nant displays me his main power ; with a 
blaze of burning darts, flying to and fro, 
gleams of stars coruscant and hail of fiery 

sparks, 



The Queen's Progress 17 



sparks, lightnings of wildfire, a-water and 
land, flight and shoot of thunder-bolts, all 
with such continuance, terror and vehe- 
mence, that the heavens thundered, the 
water surged and the earth shook, in such 
sort surely, as had we not been assured the 
fulminant deity was all but in amity, and 
could not otherwise witness his welcoming 
unto her Highness, it would have made me 
for my part, as hardy as I am, very venge- 
ably afeared." 

The second Sunday of the Queen's stay 
was enlivened with a rustic "bride-ale," de- 
scribed by the dapper little clerk of the coun- 
cil chamber door with great gusto and in 
much the mood of contemptuous pleasan- 
try in which Shakespeare treats his company 
of "base mechanicals" in A Midsummer 
Night's Dream, "The bridegroom fore- 
most, in his father's tawny worsted jacket, 
... a fair strawn hat with a capital crown, 
steeplewise on his head ; a pair of harvest 
gloves 



1 8 The Queen's Progress 

gloves on his hands as a sign of good hus- 
bandry ; a pen and inkhorn at his back, for 
he would be known to be bookish ; lame of 
a leg that in his youth was broken at foot- 
ball : well beloved yet of his mother that 
lent him a new muffler for a napkin that 
was tied to his girdle for [fear of] losing. 
. . . Then followed his worshipful bride, 
led (after the country manner) between two 
ancient parishioners, ... a thirty year old, of 
color brown-bay, not very beautiful indeed, 
yet marvellously fain at the office because 
she heard say she should dance before the 
Queen. . . . After this bride, came there two 
by two a dozen damsels for bride-maids, 
that for favor, attire, for fashion and clean- 
liness were as meet for such a bride as a 
treen ladle for a porridge-pot.' ' Into the ex- 
aggerated misadventures of these rustics in 
their running at quintain and their morris- 
dancing we shall not follow Laneham, 
whose jocular impertinence is that of a man 

who 



The Queen's Progress 19 



who is at pains to create the impression 
that he has never been nearer to these com- 
mon folk than now. 

Following the " bride-ale " was a repre- 
sentation of the Hock-tide or Hox Tuesday 
play, as it was called, by men come over 
from the neighboring town of Coventry. 
Coventry had been famous throughout the 
Middle Ages for its pageantry ; and " mira- 
cle' ' and " morality' ' had flourished there as 
nowhere else in England, if we except York 
and possibly London. For the Hock-tide 
play even a greater antiquity was claimed, 
as it was said to commemorate, by a yearly 
mock-fight with accompanying "rymez," 
the overthrow of the Danes by the men 
of Coventry on Saint B rice's Day, 1012. 
This commemoration is known to have 
continued from the year after the battle 
of Agincourt, 141 6, to the Queen's visit 
to Kenilworth, on which latter occasion it 
was repeated at Elizabeth's request. These 

last 



20 The Queen's Progress 

last presentations were under the direction 
of one Captain Cox, "an odd man, I pro- 
mise you/' says Laneham, " by profession 
a mason and that right skilfull, very cun- 
ning in fence, and hardy as Gawain ; for his 
long-sword hangs at his table's end." 

We shall not follow our cicerone in his 
account of "an ambrosial banquet/' at 
which the number of dishes was three hun- 
dred and whereof " her Majesty eat smally 
or nothing/' in his delight over " a swim- 
ming mermaid that from top to tail was 
an eighteen foot long," or into the intri- 
cacies of the speeches which Triton made 
or Arion sang in behalf of their master, 
" the supreme salsipotent monarch, Nep- 
tune, prince of profundities and sovereign 
seignior of all lakes." From another source 
it is related that Arion, having upon this 
occasion contracted a hoarse voice from 
sitting so long in the damp on his dolphin, 
awaiting the coming of the Queen, he 

snatched 



The Queen's Progress 



2 I 



snatched off his disguise and swore " that 
he was no Arion but e'en honest Harry 
Goldingham, who would sing as well as he 
could ; whereat the Queen was exceeding 
delighted/' 

But if the festivities contained triumphs, 
there were disappointments as well. " Had 
her Highness happened this day to have 
comen abroad,' ' says Laneham, " there was 
made ready a device of goddesses and 
nymphs which, as well for the ingenious 
argument as for the well handling of it 
in rime and enditing, would undoubtedly 
have gained great liking and moved no 
less delight." This device was an elaborate 
piece of allegory called the Masque of Za- 
beta y the work of the notable court poet 
Gascoigne, " being prepared and ready — 
every actor in his garment — two or three 
days together, yet never came to execution. 
The cause whereof I cannot attribute to 
any other thing," says the author, " than 

to 



22 The Queen's Progress 

to a lack of opportunity and seasonable 
weather/' Perhaps there was another rea- 
son, as a look at Zabeta, which its author 
was careful to have published in the next 
year with his account of the festivities in 
general, makes plain. The chief interlocu- 
tors of this masque are Diana and several 
of her nymphs, Mercury, Jove's Messenger, 
and Iris, the Messenger of Juno. Diana is 
deploring the loss of her most beloved 
nymph, Zabeta, and sends out her nymphs 
in various directions to look for her. In her 
lament she contrives thus to describe the 
lost paragon : 

My sister first, which Pallas hath to name, 
Envyed Zabeta for hyr learned brayne. 
My sister Venus feared Zabetaes fame, 
Whose gleames of grace hyr beuties blase dyd 

stayne ; 
Apollo dread to touch an Instrument, 
Where my Zabeta chaunst to come in place : 
Yea, Mercurie was not so eloquent, 
Nor in his words had halfe so good a grace. 

My 



Masque of Zabeta 



The Queen's Progress 23 

My stepdame Juno, in hyr glyttering guyse, 
Was nothing like so heavenlie to beholde : 
Short tale to make, Zabeta was the wight, 
On whom to thinke my heart now waxeth cold. 

In the midst of her lament, Mercury ar- 
rives from Jove to explain how Zabeta has 
become a great queen, who, against all the 
wiles of Juno, has remained " in constant 
vow of chaste unspotted life;" whereupon 
Diana and her train kneel in obeisance be- 
fore her Majesty. But now comes the gist 
of the matter ; for, Diana and " Mercury 
being departed, Iris cometh down from the 
rainbow sent by Juno," 

Who crowned first your comely head with Princely 
Dyademes ? 

persuading the Queen's Majesty that she 
be not carried away " with Mercuries filed 
speach, nor Dyanaes faire words, but that 
she consider all things by proofe, and then 
shee shall finde much greater cause to fol- 
io we Juno then Dyana" 

At 



24 The Queen's Progress 

At the end the messenger rises to pro- 
phecy of unmistakable import : 

Where you now in Princely port 

have past one pleasant day, 
A world of wealth at wil 

you hencefoorth shall enjoy 
In wedded state, and therewithall 

holde up from great annoy 
The staffe of your estate ; 

O Queene, O worthy Queene, 
Yet never wight felt perfect blis, 

but such as wedded beene. 

Possibly considering the strength of all 
this allegory and the warmth of Iris's mes- 
sage, an intimation that her Majesty pre- 
ferred not to be so directly courted in 
similitudes had most to do with the non- 
performance of Zabeta. That the Queen 
should have been permitted long to remain 
in ignorance of the nature of this masque, 
neither the assiduity of her suitor nor the 
vanity of his poet could have brooked. 
The progress came to an end and, contrary 

to 



The Queen's Progress 25 



to the expectations and the fears of many, 
my lord of Leicester was still no more than 
my lord of Leicester, and Elizabeth had 
only passed through another flirtation, one 
of the many that had been and were yet 
to come. 



II 

AN ELIZABETHAN WILL 




II 



An Elizabethan Will 



29 



On the twelfth of January, 1559, 
William Breton " of the parryshe 
of saynt Gyles w^ut creplegate of 
London gentilman" departed this life at his 
" capitall mansion house in Redcrostrete." 
William Breton was the younger son of 
an excellent and ancient family settled in 
various midland counties of England. He 
had come up to London in youth, and en- 
gaged in trade. He had prospered, as his 
will abundantly proves; and, in the midst 
of the multifarious popular impulses that 
struck at the root of feudal tenures and 
unclasped even the rigid fingers of mort- 
main. 



3° An Elizabethan Will 



main, Breton had contrived to become a 
landed proprietor of no little wealth and 
importance ; nay, some of the hereditary 
lands of the Bretons had fallen into the 
hands of this younger son in a manner cer- 
tainly other than that of inheritance. We 
have no evidence of the nature of the ven- 
tures in which Breton made his money^ and 
we shall not seek to cloud the memory of 
a man whose large testamentary charities 
seem to betoken a kind master and a citi- 
zen thoughtful of the needs of his indigent 
neighbors. 

Despite all preconceptions and illusions, 
the great age of Elizabeth was hard, liti- 
gious, bloody, and corrupt. It was not un- 
til the next reign that a philosopher and 
a lord chancellor of England came to his 
fall by the confessed acceptance of a bribe ; 
but Edmund Spenser, the gentlest of poets 
and of men, helped put to the sword, save 
for a few officers, a band of surrendered 

Spanish 



An Elizabethan Will 3 1 

Spanish invaders, at Smerwick in Ireland, 
and the famous Sir Thomas Gresham grew 
from modest proportions to the greatest 
financier and money-lender of his day on 
his travelling expenses and twenty shillings 
a day, a miracle which brokerage and com- 
pound interest alone will not completely 
explain. But thin partitions did divide 
merchant adventure from piracy, and the 
arms of Sir John Hawkins, " a demi-moor 
proper bound with a cord," were acquired 
not without much misery and suffering to 
people not of Sir John's race or color. 

In such a state of society, the prospects 
of a clear head linked with not too scru- 
pulous a conscience were boundless ; and 
William Breton's was not the only case in 
which the younger son came in time to 
possess the paternal acres whilst his elder 
brother pined away in the Fleet, or found 
his El Dorado in a Spanish dungeon. 

The immediate family of William Breton 

consisted 



3 2 An Elizabethan Will 

consisted of his wife Elizabeth, the daugh- 
ter of a London merchant and, apparently, 
considerably her husband's junior, two sons, 
the younger of whom was afterwards to be- 
come the graceful poet Nicholas Breton, 
and three daughters : all minors at their 
father's death. The will is a carefully writ- 
ten document, decked out with the flour- 
ishes and proverbial piety of the age, and 
offering every evidence, from its inordinate 
length, that the scrivener was still paid un- 
der statute by the number of his words. 
By the terms of this document, William 
Breton devised certain tenements in Barby- 
can and Redcross Street to his wife abso- 
lutely, gave her a life estate in his "key 
and wharfFe called Dyse," and bequeathed 
her "tenne kyen " on his farm at Wal- 
thamstow in Essex, one hundred pounds 
in money, half his " playt," her jewels, 
apparel, and many other articles. He also 
made her the guardian of the children. 

Beside 



An Elizabethan Will 



33 



Beside many special bequests to each, the 
elder son received ten tenements in Lon- 
don of a considerable yearly rental, while 
the younger was granted the two manors 
of Burgh in Lincoln and Wykes in Essex. 
Among many other bequests, each daughter 
was to receive a marriage portion of two 
hundred marks (upwards of eight hundred 
pounds in present value), and no less than a 
thousand pounds were distributed in lega- 
cies to servants and in alms to the poor. 

Let us reconstruct to imagination's in- 
ward eye the home in Redcross Street, its 
retinue of family servants, its garniture of 
family plate, jewels, gilt bedsteads, velvet 
and satin hangings. Stow tells us that " in 
Redcross Street on the west side from Saint 
Giles Churchyard, be many faire houses 
builded outward, with divers allies, turning 
into a large plot of ground, of old time 
called the Jewes Garden, as being the onely 
place appointed them in England wherein 

to 



34 An Elizabethan Will 

to bury their dead. This plot of ground 
... is now turned into faire garden plots 
and summer houses for pleasure." We may 
imagine the garden of William Breton as 
not so large indeed or so ambitious as that 
my lord of St. Albans set forth so deli- 
ciously in his Essayes or Counsells Civill and 
Morally and yet not wanting in rosemary 
and sweet marjoram, briar, stock and gilly- 
flowers, " having a faire allie in the midst, 
ranged on both sides with fruit trees, that 
you may goe in shade," and prim with 
" images cut out in juniper or other garden 
stuff." Perhaps our worthy merchant was 
not above more practical gardening, and 
planted "melons, pompions, gourds, skirets, 
turneps and all kinds of salad herbes;" or, 
much to that worthy's disgust, set his hon- 
est gardener, King, to the care of rare and 
curious foreign plants and "simples," "for 
delectation sake unto the eie and their odor- 
iferous savours unto the nose." 

We 



An Elizabethan Will 35 

We can scarcely suppose our " capitall 
mansion" to have been constructed of any- 
thing better than wood, with clay or plaster 
outer panels of red or white. There were 
two or three stories, a low roof covered with 
thatch or perhaps tile, and windows of 
lattice and small diamond panes of Flem- 
ish glass. It is likely that all the outbuild- 
ings to the brew-house and mews were 
under one roof, and, considering the date, 
the luxury of a chimney may perhaps be 
doubted. " Within," as Lemnius, a con- 
temporary Dutch physician, informs us, "all 
was strawed with sweet herbes and rushes. 
. . . Their nosegays, finely entermingled 
wyth sondrie sortes of fragraunte flowres 
in their bed-chambers and inner rooms, 
with comfortable smell cheered mee up 
and entyrely delighted all my sences." 

Furniture was scant, and, besides a few 
chairs, and tables of common wood but 
spread with " fine naperie," consisted 

chiefly 



3 6 An Elizabethan Will 



chiefly of the standing and truckle beds, 
the garniture of each sleeping room, and 
of a large number of ornamental cupboards 
and chests, elevated on feet, of "sweet, rare, 
carven work," strengthened with wrought- 
iron bands and fastenings. The pantry was 
better equipped, and here might be seen 
abundance of bright pewter platters, tank- 
ards, fine linen, and possibly even some sil- 
ver and Venetian glass. All the better rooms 
were hung with tapestry or " arras of Tur- 
key work," displaying some classical or bib- 
lical story ; or, perhaps in the merchant's 
household, made of but " right painted 
cloth," depicting such bits of worldly wis- 
dom as " Beware the mouse, the maggot 
and the moth," or " Light gaines make 
heavy purses," and hanging sufficiently far 
from the wall to protect from damp and 
afford some eavesdropping city Polonius a 
hiding-place. With Shakespeare's Gremio 
might Breton exclaim : 

My 



An Elizabethan Will 37 



My house within the city 
Is richly furnished with plate and gold ; 
Basins and ewers ; . . . 
My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry ; 
In ivory coffers have I stuff 'd my crowns; 
In cypress chests my arras counterpoints, 
Costly apparel, tents, and canopies, 
Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl, 
Valance of Venice gold in needlework, 
Pewter and brass and all things that belong 
To house or house-keeping. 

The larder too was well supplied, for " our 
bodies doe crave a little more ample nour- 
ishment than the inhabitants of the hotter 
regions are accustomed withal," says Harri- 
son. While it is likely that our excellent 
merchant had not yet become so infected 
with foreign customs as to employ " musi- 
call-headed Frenchmen and strangers " as 
his cooks, he none the less indulged in " not 
onely beefe, mutton, veale, lambe,kid, porke, 
conie, capon, pig or so manie of these as 
the season yieldeth, but also some portion 

of 



38 An Elizabethan Will 

of the red or fallow deere, beside great va- 
rietie of fish and wild foule, and thereunto 
other delicates wherein the sweet hand of 
the Portingale is not wanting." In seasons 
of entertainment too there were "geliffes of 
all colours mixed with a varietie in represen- 
tation of sundrie floures, beastes, foules and 
fruits, and thereunto marchpanes wrought 
with no small curiositie, marmilats, codinacs 
and sundrie outlandish confections." In the 
case before us, the "tenne kyen " at Wal- 
thamstow, willed to Elizabeth Breton, sug- 
gest rural plenty, and doubtless more than 
one family servant was employed to con- 
vey game and poultry from the Essex farm 
to Redcross Street or in the exchange of 
courtesies with kinsfolk or neighbors. 

It was on his wines, however, that the 
merchant chiefly prided himself; and no 
less than fifty-six kinds of light wines and 
thirty of strong (from FalstafPs " excellent 
sherris" to the "small wines" of Gascony) 

are 



An Elizabethan Will 39 



are "accompted of bicause of their strength 
and valure." For every-day use the national 
drink was beer, made in monthly brewings 
by each matron and her maids, and varying 
in strength and excellence with the state 
and purse of the family. 

We may picture to ourselves a wholesome 
and decorous family life, in which piety and 
thrift stood for the chiefest household gods. 
It speaks not a little for the trust which 
the old merchant reposed in his young wife, 
that we find him providing that the lega- 
cies to his daughters shall become void if 
either should marry without her mother's 
consent. 

Unfortunately this trust seems not to have 
been very wisely bestowed. For some few 
years after her husband's death, Elizabeth 
Breton took to herself a new spouse in the 
person of Master George Gascoigne. The 
marriage was purely a matter of conven- 
ience. Gascoigne was handsome, dashing, 

well- 



4° An Elizabethan Will 

well-born, and penniless ; he had been by 
turns a student, a courtier, and a man about 
town. Of late, he had gained a pretty repu- 
tation as a poet. It was even whispered — 
and what could be a stronger recommenda- 
tion to the young city widow — that his 
name had been coupled in gossip at Court 
with the names of certain high-born ladies. 
At all events, in the bulky budget of the 
courtier's love poems, no sonnet can be 
found addressed to Elizabeth Breton. The 
citizen's young widow, comfortably en- 
sconced in her "capitall mansion house in 
Redcrostrete," with the rents of a score of 
tenements and farms, was a tempting bait 
to the impoverished courtier with his re- 
cent experiences of a debtors' prison. Her 
children could offer no resistance, and the 
executors might prove not unmanageable. 
Possibly in view of the doubt cast on her 
first husband's gentility through his engag- 
ing in trade, the young widow was equally 

prone 



An Elizabethan Will 4 1 

prone to the alliance, as it was one with a 
veritable gentleman, whose hands at least 
had never been sullied with the getting, 
much less with the keeping of gold. 

From the Diary of a Resident of London, 
under date of September, 1562, we glean 
the following : " The sam day at nyght 
betwyn viii and ix was a grett fray in Red- 
crossestret betwyn ii gentyllmen and ther 
men, for they dyd both mare [arrange to 
marry] one woman, and dyvers wher hurtt ; 
thes wher there names, Master Boysse 
[Bowes] and Master Gaskyn [Gascoigne] 
gentyllmen. " There is no proof of the 
identity of the poet with this Gascoigne, 
or of the widow Breton with the cause of 
this brawl. But aside from the fact that 
the " resident's " orthography will warrant 
any assumption, the time, the place, the 
characters and status of both parties make 
the supposition of identity colorable, and 
afford us a vivid illustration of the manners 

of 



4 2 



An Elizabethan Will 



of the day, in which the hot blood that 
prompts to immediate personal encounter 
had not yet been cooled by the diabolic 
etiquette of the modern duel. Surely we 
can forgive the infatuation of the excellent 
city matron — if infatuation there really was 
— when so handsome and so well-born a 
gallant came from Westminster to pay her 
honorable court and ventured his life in 
defence of her honor. 

Two years after the solemnization of this 
marriage, a jury at Guildhall entered into 
an enquiry before the Lord Mayor, the ap- 
parent object of which was the protection 
of William Breton's property against his 
widow and her new husband. We do not 
know what became of this suit. Perhaps it 
was amicably settled. 

Too much is not to be expected from 
such a marriage; though there is little ex- 
cept its social disparity to guide conjecture. 
Elizabeth probably lived at Walthamstow, 

save 



An Elizabethan Will 43 

save for an occasional jaunt to town or visit 
among her city kinsfolk. Gascoigne, when 
not abroad in the wars or dancing attend- 
ance on the royal progresses, was busy with 
quill and inkhorn inditing sonnets to the 
Queen's ladies-in-waiting or concocting the 
bitter moral reflections and apothegms of 
the Steele Glas in an agony of repentance at 
the time of his "youth misspent. " Eliza- 
beth's kinsfolk called her " Madam ;" and, 
on passing her in the street, gave her the 
wall ; the poet thenceforth at least escaped 
the debtors' jail and influenced his younger 
stepson, Nicholas Breton, to a gentlemanly 
literary career. 

Soon after, Gascoigne went abroad as an 
adventurer in the Dutch wars, whither we 
need not follow him. As to Elizabeth Gas- 
coigne, we are at perfect liberty. She may 
have been an English Xantippe for aught 
we know, driving a not very philosophical 
Socrates into unmerited exile. Quite as pos- 
sibly 



44 An Elizabethan Will 

sibly she may have been a very Penelope, 
dwelling meekly on her farm with her five 
children and besought in marriage for her 
" tenne kyen " by every eligible suitor in 
Essex. In either case her Ulysses returned, 
not without some damage at the hands of 
the sirens, and we find him restored to 
court favor, writing much repentant prose, 
and residing at Walthamstow till within a 
short time before his death. 

We have thus before us three types of 
Elizabethan life, all represented with cease- 
less iteration and variety in the comedies 
of the age. The rakish, well-born spend- 
thrift has been a stock hero of the stage, 
time out of mind. The Elizabethan variety, 
however, claims a distinction that raises 
him out of the common category of the 
Aimwells and Charles Surfaces to a position 
of his own. There is a naivete about the 
sinning of the Elizabethan scapegrace that 
almost justifies palliation. He is often very 

naughty, 



An Elizabethan Will 



45 



naughty, but then he always cries peccavi, 
and his after-qualms of conscience are some- 
times ludicrously at variance with the real 
magnitude of his offences. 

Scarcely less familiar is the figure of the 
city maid or widow, her head full of the 
romances of a grand alliance, who delights 
to exclaim : " Though my father be a low- 
capped tradesman, yet I must be a lady ; 
and I praise God my mother must call 
me Madam." The widow Breton was less 
unfortunate than one of these infatuates, 
who, having first signed away her settle- 
ment, drove off to the country in search of 
her husband's castle and an estate which 
with its appurtenances existed only in that 
worthy's fertile imagination. It is consol- 
ing to know that an even-handed play- 
wright meted out poetical Nemesis to this 
wretch. He started on a voyage to Virginia 
with his ill-gotten wealth, but, wrecked in- 
gloriously on the Isle of Dogs, was incon- 
tinently 



4 6 An Elizabethan Will 

tinently seized and clapped into jail by the 
bailies. 

Lastly, Touchstone, the goldsmith of 
Eastward Hoe I is William Breton with a 
larger infusion of the bourgeois; Eyre of 
The Shoemakers Holiday represents the more 
jovial and homely character of a trades- 
man who has raised himself from the low- 
est round of the ladder by sheer mother 
wit. Bassanio's Antonio himself, whose no- 
ble want of the tradesman's knack shows 
him a merchant made, not born, is again a 
deviation to a higher class, the merchant 
adventurer. In all, the type consists of the 
sturdy, unimaginative Englishman, with an 
innate proclivity for money-getting, and 
his chief joy in his reputation for rectitude, 
his home, and the substantial comforts of 
life. The Elizabethan merchant was not 
essentially different from the English mer- 
chant of to-day, save that he indulged when 
he could in the slave-trade and displayed a 

decided 



An Elizabethan Will 47 

decided penchant for piracy on the high 
seas. Shifting social conditions, ineffectu- 
ally stringent laws against usury, and the 
pernicious royal grants of monopoly go far 
to explain the fact that, amongst the Eliza- 
bethans, Mercury was still the tutelary god 
of merchants and of thieves ; while the 
fervid Puritanism that devoutly believed it 
a service to God to spoil the tents of the 
children of Abimelech, together with the 
spirit of retaliation which the horrors of 
the Inquisition righteously inspired, is am- 
ply sufficient to transmute those larger ad- 
venturers, the Grenvilles and the Gilberts, 
the Hawkinses and the Drakes, from the 
gross metal of buccaneers into the gold of 
heroes. 



Ill 



THOMAS STUCLEr 
GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER 



5i 




III 



Thomas Stucley 
Gentleman Adventurer 



The sixteenth century was the hey- 
day of the adventurer. He infested 
every station of life, hectoring like 
Bobadil, resorting with needy gallants to 
Paul's Walk, the centre aisle of the cathe- 
dral, there to pick up the news of the day 
and perchance an acquaintance whose well- 
lined purse might discharge the expense of 
an " ordinary/ ' the Elizabethan table d'hote, 
for both ; now pressing into the presence, 
or attending at the very door of the privy 
council, with secret information treacher- 
ously gleaned and a sword and a lying 

tongue 



5 2 "Thomas Stucley 

tongue for sale to the highest bidder. The 
air was full of projects, from Dr. Dee's 
plan to transmute pewter platters and ale 
tankards into gold to the capture of Span- 
ish galleons laden with treasure and the 
founding of enduring empires beyond the 
seas. The Queen herself was a sharer in 
many a venture of trade and some of 
plunder ; and the protection which many a 
red-handed marauder of the sea received 
from her Majesty was the mingled product 
of the royal admiration for his prowess and 
daring and an eager desire to participate in 
the spoils. Prentices standing on the cob- 
ble-stones of inn-yards craned their necks 
in the crowd to see rude theatrical repre- 
sentations of Whittington who, by his cat 
and the favor of the Emperor of Morocco, 
had risen to the acme of civic ambition, 
the lord mayoralty of the City of London. 
Rude scenes of noise and turmoil displayed 
the adventures of those four famous English 

prentices, 



Gentleman Adventurer 5 3 

prentices, "sons of the old Earl of Bulloign," 
who after surmounting untold perils meet 
their father at the siege of Jerusalem and 
obtain, each of them, by the capture of the 
sacred city, a royal crown and a princely 
bride. Indeed the imaginations of poets 
scarcely exceed the actual experiences of 
many Englishmen at home and abroad, — 
their sailings on strange seas, their traversing 
of stranger lands, their hardships and perils, 
their encounters and hairbreadth escapes. 

Amongst the host of Elizabethan adven- 
turers there was none more daring, more 
unscrupulous, and more uniformly success- 
ful than Thomas Stucley, whom the Pope 
and the Spanish King afterwards dignified 
with the title " Duke of Ireland." Stucley 
was the third son of a small baronet of Dev- 
onshire, the county that gave to England 
Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Hawkins, 
and so many other " brave navigators.' ' 
Stucley's education in war — he seems to 

have 



54 Thomas Stucley 

have had little other education — dates 
back to the last years of the reign of Henry 
the Eighth, under the Duke of Suffolk. 
Later, Stucley figures as one of the retainers 
of the Protector Somerset, in the failure of 
whose plans he was too deeply compromised 
to remain in England. He offered his ser- 
vices to Henry the Second of France, who 
shortly became so attached to the young 
Englishman that he designated him in a 
letter to King Edward, " our very dear and 
beloved son, brother, cousin, gossip and 
ally," and besought the English King to 
take Stucley back into his royal favor. The 
warmth of this recommendation is explained 
by the fact that Stucley was really a spy in 
the pay of France. With the thrift of his 
kind, he soon turned his equivocal position 
to advantage on both sides and maintained 
himself in a nicely adjusted equilibrium, at 
once a servant of the King of France and 
the loyal subject of Edward of England. 

This 



Gentleman Adventurer 55 

This could not last, and before long Stucley 
found himself lodged in the Tower for re- 
porting of the French King what the French 
King could never allow that he could pos- 
sibly have said. From the Tower Stucley 
was delivered by the accession of Queen 
Mary. 

Into the checkered career of Stucley for 
the next few years we need not pry. On the 
personal recommendation of Queen Mary 
he was received into the service of the 
Emperor. About this time Stucley is de- 
scribed as " commonly pretending himself 
to be a man of value and livelihood, when 
in truth he never had in his own right 
one foot of land, [but lived by] borrow- 
ing in every place and paying nowhere. " 
Color is lent this, though the statement 
of an enemy, by the fact that, wishing to 
return to England in the train of the Duke 
of Saxony, Stucley wrote to the Queen be- 
seeching that he might be " exempted from 

all 



56 Thomas Stucley 

all danger and arrest by reason of my debts : " 
a favor which he seems to have obtained. 
Like most spendthrifts, Stucley was gener- 
ous with money and was always a popular 
captain and master. He is reported to have 
gained the love of his followers by bounti- 
ful largesses, and he did not forget his kin 
in the days of his good fortune. No pro- 
ject was too great or too mad for his under- 
taking, and his genuine knowledge of war, 
his success in the management of men, his 
daring and true bravery in action, raised 
him into heroic stature on the field of 
battle or in the intricacies of a campaign. 
Stucley was not only a spendthrift and a 
soldier of fortune, he was likewise a most 
egregious braggart, boasting of his large 
estate, of his intimacy with princes, his own 
prowess, his magnificence. It must have 
been a sight long to be remembered to see 
Stucley ruffling it at Court with a gorgeous 
retinue, sufficient in number and costliness 

of 



Gentleman Adventurer 57 



of attire to wait upon an earl. His arrogance 
was such that, taken with his notorious 
dare-devil courage, few men cared to cross 
his path. A characteristic story is related of 
Stucley, come to take leave of the Queen on 
the eve of his departure on an expedition 
the object of which was a much vaunted 
conquest of Florida. Rallying him on his 
grand manners and great importance, her 
Majesty finally " demanded him pleasantly 
whether he would remember her when 
settled in his kingdom. ' Yes/ saith he, 
' and write unto you also." ' And what style 
wilt thou use?' 'To my loving sister, as 
one prince writes unto another/ " was the 
ready retort. 

This story, with the remarkable freedom 
of Stucley's intercourse with princes, their 
evident consideration of him, and the many 
favors which he seems only to have had to 
ask to receive at their hands, led to the sur- 
mise that Stucley may have been related 

to 



58 "Thomas Stucley 



to Henry the Eighth, as Falconbridge was 
related to Richard Coeur de Lion in Shake- 
speare's King John. The mere rumor of 
such a thing would account for Stucley's 
welcome to foreign courts, his arrogance 
and his popularity. It is but fair to state, 
however, that, swaggerer and braggart that 
Stucley was, he never claimed royal blood, 
nor did his enemies ever attaint his birth. 
Before he was cold in his grave he had 
become one of the heroes of popular folk- 
lore, celebrated in ballads and represented 
on the stage. Whence it happens that many 
of the facts of his life have been grossly 
distorted by a kind of romantic refraction. 

Amongst the various means which Stuc- 
ley practised to recoup his periodically 
battered fortunes was the usual one of a 
rich marriage. His enemies reported that 
he made more than one such, and we 
learn that, in accord with the businesslike 
methods which attended the arrangement 

of 



Gentleman Adventurer 



59 



of such matters in his age, Stucley appears 
more than once a party to such negotia- 
tions. When well on in his career he con- 
trived to marry the young granddaughter 
and heiress of Alderman Sir Thomas Curtis. 
" By this marriage/ ' we are told, " he got 
so good an estate as might have qualified a 
moderate mind to have lived bountifully 
and in great esteem, equal to the chief of 
his house." As it was, the unhappy girl's 
fortune was dissipated in a few months. 
The anonymous author of the play entitled 
Sir Thomas Stucley makes this marriage the 
starting-point of the adventures of his hero, 
and gives us a clear presentation of a de- 
termined and infatuated girl overcoming 
the reluctance of her prudent parents to 
yield a consent to her marriage with a 
young gallant whom they distrust but can 
learn little about. Married, and his wife's 
dower and jewels in his hands, the Stuc- 
ley of the play in a capital scene pays his 

thronging, 



6o 



"Thomas Stucley 



thronging, cringing creditors, equips a 
company of soldiers for his sovereign's ser- 
vice, and declares to his weeping wife : 

It is not chambering, 
Now I have beauty to be dallying with, 
Nor pampering of myself, . . . 
Now I have got a little worldly pelf, 
That is the end or levels of my thought. 
I must have honor; honor is the thing 
Stucley doth thirst for, and to climb the mount 
Where she is seated ; gold shall be my footstool. 

The connection of these events belongs 
to the higher logic which dominates the 
doings of the drama. As to their actual 
sequence we have no knowledge, so intri- 
cate and so interwoven were all the projects 
and doings of this active and enterprising 
adventurer. Stucley appears to have been 
one of the first who succeeded in gaining 
Queen Elizabeth's participancy in the pro- 
fitable trade of buccaneering. It was as 
early as 1563 that he formed the design of 

peopling 



Gentleman Adventurer 



61 



peopling Florida. " Stucley [was one]," 
says Fuller, " whose spirit was of so high a 
strain that it vilified subjection (though in 
the highest and chiefest degree) as con- 
temptible, aiming as high as the moon, at 
not less than sovereignty/' 

On the high seas with " five good ships 
and a pinnace, with 2000 weight of corn- 
powder, and 100 curriers . . . besides artil- 
lery to the value of ^120," Stucley forgot 
all about Florida and spent his time, much 
to his content, in preying upon French and 
Spanish commerce, although England was 
at the moment ostensibly at peace with 
both countries. Sir Thomas Chaloner, Eliz- 
abeth's ambassador, wrote to Cecil from 
Madrid: "Stucley's piracies are much railed 
at here on all parts. I hang down my head 
with shame enough. Alas, though it cost 
the Queen roundly, let him for honor's 
sake be fetched in. These pardons to such 
folks as be hostes humani generis I like not." 

Whether 



62 "Thomas Stucley 

Whether it was " for honor's sake," or be- 
cause the royal share in the profits was not 
sufficiently large, Elizabeth gave Sir Peter 
Carew, one of Stucley's numerous cousins, 
a commission to apprehend all pirates in 
the Irish seas. Sir Peter found one hulk of 
Stucley's in Cork harbor, and confiscated it. 
He also managed a little skirmish with a 
party of pirates who had fortified themselves 
in a castle, but was repulsed. Stucley having 
arranged to have his latest victim, a Flem- 
ish merchant, affirm before the mayor of 
Kinsale that " he had compounded frankly 
and freely with Stucley, without any com- 
pulsion or fear," that gentleman was not 
further molested, though he never suc- 
ceeded thereafter in regaining the favor 
of his Queen. Perhaps Stucley's promises 
were in too great disparity contrasted with 
his achievements. A compassionate regard 
for failure was not amongst the virtues 
of Elizabeth ; and Stucley, judged by the 

later 



Gentleman Adventurer 63 

later golden standards of Hawkins and 
Drake, was for the nonce an unsuccessful 
buccaneer. 

Prior to the undertaking of these naval 
adventures, Stucley had contrived to form 
an intimacy with the celebrated Shane 
O'Neill, who had come to the English 
Court with " a train of Kerns and Gallow- 
glasses, clothed in linen kilts dyed with 
saffron. " On his return Shane, writing to 
Elizabeth, declared : " Many of the nobles, 
magnates, and gentlemen of that kingdom 
[Scotland] treated me kindly and ingenu- 
ously, and namely one of your realm, Mas- 
ter Thomas Stucley, entertained me with 
his whole heart, and with all the favor he 
could. But I perceived that his whole inten- 
tion, and the benevolence he showed me, 
tended to this — to show me the magnifi- 
cence and the honor of your Majesty and 
your realm. " If the unsophisticated Irish 
chief was right in the last surmise, we may 

feel 



64 "Thomas Stucley 

feel sure that Stucley was well paid for his 
pains. Stucley's acquaintance with Shane 
O'Neill, though he was a dangerous and 
successful enemy of the English in Ireland, 
seems to have proved valuable after the fail- 
ure of his inroads upon the commerce of 
France and Spain. For we find Stucley soon 
after recommended by the Earls of Pem- 
broke and Leicester, as well as by Cecil, to 
the service of Sir Henry Sidney, Deputy of 
Ireland, and employed by the last in several 
negotiations with Shane. Here again we 
must forbear to follow our clever adventurer 
too closely lest we become involved in that 
tangled labyrinth of treachery, bloodshed, 
injustice, and necessary and unnecessary 
tyranny which characterized the Tudor 
relations with Ireland. It appears that al- 
though Stucley gained the confidence and 
liking of Sidney, the latter was unable to 
obtain for him at the royal hands any post 
in the employ of the government such as 

seemed 



Gentleman Adventurer 65 

seemed to Stucley at all commensurate with 
his talents. At length, apparently through 
a private feud, Stucley was committed a 
close prisoner to Dublin Castle, charged 
with using coarse language concerning the 
Queen and with levying war against her. 
It was then that he fell into the plot of the 
Catholic clergy and nobility of Ireland by 
which the crown of Ireland was to be of- 
fered to the brother of the King of Spain, 
Don John of Austria, and Ireland was to be 
separated forever from England. From this 
time forth the allegiance of Stucley was to 
the Roman Church, to Mary Stuart, and to 
Spain. 

In Spain Stucley was well received, given 
large gifts of money, set up in a handsome 
establishment with thirty gentlemen to at- 
tend upon him, and the charges of all de- 
frayed by the King. He was welcomed 
in due time to Court and splendidly enter- 
tained. He was knighted by Philip and 

inducted 



66 Thomas Stucley 

inducted into the Spanish order of reli- 
gious knights, that of Calatrava. Ever urg- 
ing his plan for the conquest of Ireland, 
begging for ships to put to sea and prey 
upon English commerce, at jealousies with 
other renegades like himself, Stucley wore 
himself out, as did many a better man, in 
awaiting the decision and action of Philip, 
who continued leisurely to spin his toils 
unguided by advice and undeterred by the 
recurrent failure that comes to him that is 
ever too late. Amongst the Spaniards Stuc- 
ley was popularly known as the " Duke of 
Ireland,' ' and he was as loud in his boasts 
of his own importance as he was foul in 
the calumnies which he spread of Queen 
Elizabeth and her Court. Into the latter 
we need not enquire. When asked by the 
Spanish secretary, £ayas, to give a list of 
the lands, his possessions in Ireland, of 
which the Queen had deprived him, Stucley 
mentioned "The castle and town of Wex- 
ford, 



Gentleman Adventurer 



67 



ford, and the whole county ; the abbey of 
Inniscorthy and that country of mosses, 
and seven or eight farms worth a thousand 
marks a year. The castle of Ferel and 
Kinsale belonging to it and the house of 
Lafylond and the Kavanagh country . . . 
the castle of Carlow and that whole county. 
The ancient kingdom of Leinster, for which 
he had paid twenty-two hundred pounds 
in one day, but which was taken from him 
because he was a Catholic and loved and 
commended the King of Spain." Upon 
another occasion he declared : " For my 
part I hate an Englishman as I hate a dog; 
for if ever I be betrayed, I shall be betrayed 
by them. But Ireland is the country that I 
and my child must stick to ; for I must live 
by them and they by me. For there will I 
build a fair Abbey, and have in it twenty- 
four friars, and one of them to pray for me 
every hour of the day and night. And there 
will I be buried." 

Wearied 



68 "Thomas Stucley 

Wearied with dancing attendance on the 
Spanish Court, Stucley sought and, after the 
usual delay, obtained a warrant with a laud- 
atory recommendation from Philip, to go 
to Rome, where he was received with great 
honor by Pope Pius the Fifth. While in 
Rome Stucley held long consultations with 
the Pope on the state of religion, and of- 
fered among other things "to conquer Ire- 
land with 3000 men and to burn the ships 
in the Thames, with a detachment of two 
ships and two armed zebras under one of 
his pilots." 

But the Pope and Philip were otherwise 
busied at the moment, and Stucley was not 
the man to remain idle when fighting was 
to be had. It seems that Stucley was cap- 
tain of three galleys under Don John at the 
battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, and 
that he acquitted himself with his usual 
bravery in that celebrated defeat of the 
Turk. But though Stucley lost none of the 

Spanish 



Gentleman Adventurer 69 

Spanish King's favor, the plot against Ire- 
land failed and, with the death of Pius the 
Fifth, Philip was left to intrigue, vacillate, 
and postpone to his heart's content and to 
the perfect security of his enemies. In vain 
Stucley undertook to defend the narrow seas 
against the navies of Elizabeth, in vain he 
tried to instruct the Spaniards how " to 
frame their ships in our manner." Stucley 
was living like a prince at this time. A 
memorandum preserved at Madrid relates : 
" The King hath given to Thomas Stucley 
at times from his first coming into Spain 
in 1570 to this time of August 1574, and 
for keeping his house at Madrid . . . the 
whole sum of 27,576 ducats," a sum the 
purchasing value of which at that time 
must have represented nearly the same num- 
ber of pounds sterling to-day. But Philip 
was not the only source of Stucley's reve- 
nues and honors. From a proclamation 
which he afterwards made it appears that 

Stucley 



7° Thomas Stucley 

Stucley now flourished under the titles 
" Baron of Ross and Idron, Viscount of 
Morough and Kenshlagh, Earl of Wexford 
and Catherlough, Marquess of Leinster and 
General of our most Holy Father, Pope 
Gregory the Thirteenth.'' That Stucley 
was regarded by the English government as 
the head and front of all conspiracies is 
proved by the diligence with which his 
movements were reported to Cecil and 
Walsingham, and the frequency of his name 
in the reports of the time. 

At length in 1578 an expedition under 
the command of Stucley was actually fitted 
out from Civita Vecchia, the purpose of 
which was to invade Ireland. Stucley sailed 
to Cadiz and thence to Lisbon, where he 
met King Sebastian of Portugal prepar- 
ing for a Quixotic expedition into Africa. 
Sebastian was a religious zealot in whose 
heart the forgotten fires of the Crusades 
still burned. Surrounded by the incense 

and 



Gentleman Adventurer 7 1 



and adulation of priests, he had come to 
believe in himself as " an ideal knight, 
chaste and strong," before whose victorious 
lance the infidel must fall. Unfortunately 
Sebastian as a military commander was in- 
competency itself. Sebastian's uncle, the 
astute King of Spain, recognized the situa- 
tion in its true light, and when Sebastian 
undertook to interfere in a petty war 
amongst the Mahometans of Morocco, re- 
fused him assistance, although the Pope 
hallowed his banners and gave him the 
sanction and blessing of the Church. How 
Stucley could have been induced to take a 
part in so mad an expedition it is bootless 
to enquire. His chances of success in his 
long-cherished scheme for the invasion of 
Ireland were not promising, he had raised 
but a thousand of the five thousand men 
needed. Perhaps he joined Sebastian on the 
latter's promise to return his favor after the 
conquest of Morocco; perhaps Philip and 

the 



7 2 Thomas Stucley 

the Pope were not sorry thus to rid them- 
selves of a man who had become a consider- 
able charge upon them both, and whom it 
was as dangerous to encourage as it was 
difficult to rebuff. 

Contemporary report, tradition, ballads, 
and dramas are at some variance as to the 
precise circumstances of Stucley's death, 
some telling how he fell early in the day 
at the battle of Alcazar, others relating that 
he died by the treacherous hands of his 
own troop of Italian soldiers, in their de- 
spair that the battle was lost. All are agreed 
that he fell valiantly as became so notable 
a commander. Burghley thus wrote of 
Stucley after his death : " Of this man might 
be written whole volumes to paint out the 
life of a man in the highest degree of vain- 
glory, prodigality, falsehood, and vile and 
filthy conversation of life, and altogether 
without faith, conscience, or religion. And 
yet this man was he whom the rebels . . . 

and 



Gentleman Adventurer 



73 



and all other fugitives being conversant at 
Rome did hang all their hope upon to have 
their malicious purposes performed to the 
ruin of the Queen their sovereign and their 
native country. But the end thereof fell 
out by God's ordinance, as by this traitor 
neither her Majesty nor her subjects re- 
ceived any damage, neither yet could any 
person in England or Ireland become owner 
of one foot of land by his death. Neither 
dukedoms, marquisates or lordships was it 
possible for her Majesty to benefit any per- 
son with the forfeitures thereof. But if his 
death did profit any, it was to the King 
of Spain and the Pope, by determination of 
their pensions, although it was credibly re- 
ported that the King of Spain, by advice of 
some of his wise counsellors, had discharged 
him of all pensions and entertainments and 
gave him passage to Rome." 



IV 
AN OLD-TIME FRIENDSHIP 



77 




IV 



An Old- Time Friendship 

In Saint Mary's, the ancient collegiate 
church of the town of Warwick, in a 
room once the chapter-house of the 
dean and canons, and apart from the sepul- 
chral pomp and recumbent imagery of 
Beauchamp Chapel, there is a single tomb 
of black and white marble, somewhat 
sombre and hearse-like in appearance, al- 
though of a befitting dignity. On it lies a 
sword, now rusted into two pieces, and a 
helmet, dust covered and fallen away with 
age. This tomb was planned and completed 
under the direction of its occupant in his 
lifetime ; for he was then the owner of 

Warwick 



78 



An Old-Time Friendship 



Warwick Castle and of the neighboring 
demesne. On a ledge of the table-like 
lower part of this tomb and running about 
it is this inscription : 

FVLKE GREVILL 

SERVANT TO QUEENE ELIZABETH 

CONCELLER TO KING JAMES 

FREND TO SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 

TROPHAEUM PECCATI 

Born four years before Elizabeth ascended 
the throne, entered at Shrewsbury School 
with Philip Sidney in the year of the birth 
of Shakespeare, Greville lived on into the 
reign of King Charles, and befriended the 
youthful Davenant, an older contemporary 
of Dryden. Greville's was a remarkable 
range of life. Scarcely less remarkable, too, 
were his relations with two of the four 
sovereigns under whom he lived, his friend- 
ships among "great ones," and his patron- 
age of the learned. Greville in his youth 

had 



Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke 



An Old-Time Friendship 79 

had travelled, like Sidney, with the reformer 
Languet ; he had entertained that rare spirit 
Giordano Bruno at his own table ; and con- 
versed on terms of equality with William 
the Silent upon the political state of Eu- 
rope. In the reign of James, Greville was 
created a baron under title of Lord Brooke 
of Beauchamp Court, and served the state 
as a privy councillor and as Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. But his greatest glory was under 
Elizabeth, who appears to have treated him 
exceedingly well, despite the description of 
her as a monarch who " was never profuse 
in the delivering out of her treasure, but 
paid many and most of her servants part in 
money and the rest with grace . . . leaving 
the arrear of recompence due to their merit 
to her great successor." Sir Robert Naunton, 
who wrote these words in an entertaining 
and gossipy book entitled Fragmenta Regalia 
or Observations on the late Queen Elizabeth, her 
Times and Favorites , declares : "Sir Fulke 

Greville 



8o An Old-Time Friendship 



Greville had no mean place in her favor, 
neither did he hold it for any short term ; 
for if I be not deceived, he had the longest 
lease and the smoothest time without rub 
of any of her favorites/ ' Elsewhere the 
same authority informs us : " Sir Fulke 
Greville had much and private access to 
Queen Elizabeth, which he used honorably, 
and did many men good." 

The few that remember the name of 
Greville or connect that name in any wise 
with literature may recall the clever note 
which Charles Lamb appended to his selec- 
tions from Greville's extraordinary dramas 
Alaham and Mustapha. " These two tra- 
gedies of Lord Brooke might with more 
propriety have been termed political trea- 
tises, than plays. Their author has strangely 
contrived to make passion, character and 
interest of the highest order subservient to 
the expression of state dogma and mysteries. 
He is nine parts Machiavel and Tacitus, 

for 



An Old-Time Friendship 81 

for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this 
writer's estimate of the faculties of his own 
mind, the understanding must have held 
a most tyrannical preeminence. Whether 
we look into his plays or his most passion- 
ate love-poems, we shall find all frozen 
and made frigid with intellect. The finest 
movements of the human heart, the ut- 
most grandeur of which the soul is capable, 
are essentially comprised in the actions and 
speeches of Caelica and Camena. Shake- 
speare, who seems to have had a peculiar 
delight in contemplating womanly perfec- 
tion, whom for his many sweet images of 
female excellence all women are in an es- 
pecial manner bound to love, has not raised 
the ideal of the female character higher 
than Lord Brooke in these two women has 
done. But it requires a study equivalent 
to the learning of a new language to un- 
derstand their meaning when they speak." 
Just though all this is, there is another light 

by 



82 An Old-Time Friendship 

by which to view this interesting man, by 
which he appears not wholly " a being of 
pure intellect," but as one in whom a warm 
and enthusiastic youthful friendship, ideal- 
ized by the flight of years, seems to have 
come to fill the place of those nearer family 
ties in which the majority of men find their 
pleasure and solace. 

The friendships of literature are of deep 
interest, whether the twin stars shine with 
independent brightness, revolve one about 
the other like a satellite about its planet as 
did Boswell about his Johnson, or come 
to be resolved by the telescope of critical 
scholarship into a constellation of lumina- 
ries as the writers of the group of plays 
still described as those of Beaumont and 
Fletcher. Not less interesting is the capa- 
city for worship than the hero whose deeds 
and perfections inspire adoration. A capa- 
city for worship implies an intuitive recog- 
nition of worth, forgetfulness of self, and an 

aspiring 



An Old-Time Friendship 83 



aspiring ideality of mind, which the hero is 
apt to fall far short in. 

Among the literary remains of Fulke 
Greville, which comprise, besides the dra- 
mas just mentioned, several difficult trea- 
tises in verse on government and some love 
poetry of rare and peculiar excellence, is 
The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney. 
This Life is not so much a biography as a 
eulogy, combining an " account of [Sid- 
ney's] principal actions, counsels, designs 
and death." The work was intended by the 
author to form an introduction to his other 
writings, and digresses into reminiscence of 
" the maxims and policies used by Queen 
Elizabeth in her government " and into her 
relations with other states. The literary 
activities of a Chancellor of the Exchequer 
in the days of King James were not with- 
out their lets and hindrances. Greville had 
proposed soon after Elizabeth's death to 
write a full account of her reign, and few 

men 



84 An Old-Time Friendship 



men could have been found better fitted for 
the task. But applying to Secretary Cecil 
for " his favor to peruse all obsolete records 
of the council-chest from those times to 
these as he in his wisdom should think 
fit," he was first cordially received, though 
at last put off with the excuse that Cecil 
" durst not presume to let the council- 
chest lie open to any man living without 
his Majesty's knowledge and approbation/' 
This answer was doubtless inevitable on 
Cecil's hearing Greville's affirmation that 
he " conceived a historian was bound to tell 
nothing but the truth." There is some- 
thing touching in the sight of this gray- 
haired man of the world sitting down to 
express in the studied eloquence of old age 
the images of " this unmatchable Queen 
and woman," as he calls Elizabeth, and of 
his boyhood's friendship with Sidney, the 
paragon of a fresher age. 

In Greville's own words : " The differ- 
ence 



An Old-Time Friendship 



8 



ence which I have found between times, 
and consequently the changes of life into 
which their natural vicissitudes do violently 
carry men, as they have made deep fur- 
rows of impression into my heart, so the 
same heavy wheels caused me to retire my 
thoughts from free traffic with the world, 
and rather seek comfortable ease or em- 
ployment in the safe memory of dead men, 
than disquiet in a doubtful conversation 
amongst the living. Which I ingenuously 
confess to be one chief motive of dedicat- 
ing these exercises of my youth to that 
worthy, Sir Philip Sidney, so long since de- 
parted/ ' Deep affection amounting almost 
to veneration for the memory of his friend 
breathes in these pages. " Though I lived 
with him and knew him from a child," he 
says, in one place, " yet I never knew him 
other than a man : with such steadfastness 
of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as 
carried grace and reverence above greater 

years. 



86 An Old-Time Friendship 



years. His talk ever of knowledge, and his 
very play tending to enrich his mind : so 
as even his teachers found something in 
him to observe and learn, above that which 
they had read or taught/' Elsewhere he 
summarizes the best in Sidney in these 
words : " His very ways in the world did 
generally add reputation to his Prince and 
country, by restoring amongst us the an- 
cient majesty of noble and true dealing ; 
as a manly wisdom that can no more be 
weighed down by any effeminate craft, than 
Hercules could be overcome by that con- 
temptible army of dwarfs. And this was it 
which, I profess, I loved dearly in him, and 
still shall be glad to honor in the good 
men of this time : I mean that his heart 
and tongue went both one way, and so 
with every one that went with the truth ; 
as knowing no other kindred, party or 
end. Above all, he made the religion he 
professed the firm basis of his life." It was 

with 



An Old-Time Friendship 87 

with such an ideal as this before him that 
Greville wrote of his youth's friendship, 
and it is this sweet but dignified adoration 
of a man who truly merited the mourn- 
ing and remembrance of a nation, that has 
given an imperishable value to this work. 

In the youth of Sidney and Greville, 
the graces of chivalry still lingered. Men 
had come to recognize that in war the age 
of personal prowess was a thing of the 
past, and that gunpowder had reduced the 
man-at-arms in his panoply of armor to 
an anachronism. At Court, however, tilt- 
ing continued to form part of " shews " 
and ceremonials ; and, on each return of 
the Queen's coronation day, a champion, 
mounted and in full armor, appeared in the 
lists, the heralds announcing his challenge 
to defend and uphold the title and right of 
" Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen 
of England, France and Ireland and of 
Virginia." Sidney and Greville were both 

notable 



An Old-Time Friendship 

notable knights, and at Whitsuntide, 1 58 1, 
were among the chief challengers in a tour- 
ney given in honor of the commissioners 
from the French King, sent to negotiate 
Elizabeth's marriage with the Duke of 
Anjou. From a contemporary account of 
these events, we have the following descrip- 
tion : " Then proceeded Master Philip Sid- 
ney in very sumptuous manner, with armor 
part blue and the rest gilt and engraven : 
with four spare horses having caparisons and 
furniture very rich and costly, as some of 
cloth of gold embroidered with pearl . . . 
very richly and cunningly wrought. He 
had four pages that rode on his four spare 
horses, who had cassock hats and Venetian 
hose all of cloth of silver laid with gold 
lace, and hats of the same with gold bands 
and white feathers. . . . Then had he 
thirty gentlemen and yeomen and four 
trumpeters, who were all in cassock coats 
and Venetian hose of yellow velvet laid with 

silver 



An Old-Time Friendship 89 



silver lace, yellow caps with silver bands 
and white feathers. . . . Then came Mas- 
ter Fulke Greville in gilt armor with rich 
caparisons and furniture, having four spare 
horses with four pages upon them, and 
four trumpeters sounding before him, and 
a twenty gentlemen and yeomen attend- 
ing upon him." There follows a minute 
description of the hose, caps, and feathers 
of Greville's attendants, which the reader 
may be spared. Suffice it to tell that the 
challengers were successful, and Sidney, his 
friend beside him, in the presence of his 
Queen and of his beloved, must have passed 
in that day one of the happiest of his life. 
Here is a sonnet that Sidney has left us on 
this occasion : 

Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance 
Guided so well that I obtained the prize, 
Both by the judgement of the English eyes ; 
And of some sent by that sweet enemie, France, 
Horsemen, my skill in horsemanship advance : 

Towne-folkes, 



9° An Old-Time Friendship 

Towne-folkes, my strength ; a daintier Judge applies 
His praise to sleight, which from good use doth rise ; 
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
Others, because of both sides I doe take 
My bloud from them who did excel in this, 
Think Nature me a man of armes did make. 
How farre they shot awry ? The true cause is, 
Stella lookt on ; and from her heav'nly face 
Sent forth the beames which made so faire my race. 

Young men such as these could not re- 
main content with the shows of war at 
home. Both strained to get away to actual 
battle and adventure, and were only re- 
strained by the imperative mandates of the 
Queen, who cared not to risk in unneces- 
sary perils the lives of those she loved to 
have about her. Sidney especially was 
deeply interested in the discoveries and ad- 
venturing of the time. Not only were books 
of poetry, like The Shepheardes Kalender, 
dedicated to him, but the first edition of his 
school-friend's, Richard Hakluyt's, Voyages 
as well. Sidney had ventured a share in 

Frobisher's 



An Old-Time Friendship 



9 1 



Frobisher's voyage of 1575 ; had sat, while 
a member of Parliament for Kent, in a com- 
mittee intrusted with a definition of the 
elastic boundaries of Virginia ; and had nar- 
rowly missed going with Sir Humphrey 
Gilbert on the ill-fated voyage that cost 
England that brave seaman. An interest- 
ing part of Greville's Life of his friend de- 
tails how the two young men slipped away 
from Court, Sidney finding an errand of state 
to Plymouth, there to effect, if possible, a 
junction with Sir Francis Drake and to sail 
with him on his famous expedition against 
the colonies of Spain. Sir Francis seems to 
have been not a little concerned at the pros- 
pect of having two such prominent young 
courtiers aboard his ship ; and was, it is 
likely, not unaware of the manner in which 
their purpose reached the ear of the Queen. 
Elizabeth's attitude towards the refractori- 
ness of her young courtiers in breaking 
away from her pampering and tyrannical 

favor 



9 2 



An Old-Time Friendship 



favor is well illustrated in the words which 
she is reported to have addressed to young 
Lord Mountjoy, who had " twice or thrice 
stole away into Brittany . . . without the 
Queen's leave or privity." When he had 
come into her presence, "she fell into a 
kind of railing, demanding how he durst 
go. ... * Serve me so/ quoth she, ' once 
more, and I will lay you fast enough for 
running ; you will never leave till you are 
knocked on the head, as that inconsider- 
ate fellow Sidney was ; you shall go when 
I send. In the mean time see that you 
lodge in the Court . . . where you may fol- 
low your book, read, and discourse of the 
wars/" Well may Greville exclaim, after 
relating his own staying on a similar occa- 
sion : " Wherein whatsoever I felt, yet I ap- 
peal to the judicious reader, whether there 
be latitude left — more than humble obe- 
dience — in these nice cases between duty 
and selfness, in a sovereign's service ? " 

When 



An Old-Time Friendship 93 

When Sidney and Greville were boys 
there was little promise of the great litera- 
ture that was about to burst forth in Eng- 
land. Chaucer was still read, it is true, and 
all were agreed in calling him the Homer 
of English poetry. But the jingling satire 
of Skelton and the rude genre farce of John 
Heywood had been succeeded in the popu- 
lar esteem by the lugubrious complaints of 
The Mirror for Magistrates, in which histori- 
cal victim after victim of the fatal turn of 
Fortune's wheel returns from his appointed 
place of torture to rehearse in long-paced 
metre and with wearisome alliteration the 
miseries of his fall, and to warn the reader 
of the probable coming of a like fate. 
Even the songs and popular lyrics partook 
of this dolefulness of subject and inevitable 
mannerism of style. The collection known 
as Totter s Miscellany, which contained the 
best lyrical poetry of the time of Henry the 
Eighth and his son, had indeed been made, 

and 



94 An Old-Time Friendship 



and had run through six editions before 
Sidney came of age ; but the best work of 
Wyatt and Surrey, contributed to this col- 
lection, remained unequalled, if we except 
the promise of something better in the ori- 
ginal work of Gascoigne and in scattered 
poems by some few others. 

But despite all this, there was a general 
interest in literature such as had never 
existed before in England. By the year 
1574, Sidney and Greville had left Shrews- 
bury and were at Oxford and Cambridge 
respectively, though still in frequent com- 
munication with each other. A year later 
Lyly, Peele, and Watson were at Oxford, 
while her sister University held Harvey, 
Spenser, Lodge, and Greene. These are 
some of the names that achieved literary 
celebrity, but every young man of promise 
was writing, translating, poetizing, theoriz- 
ing about literature. Poetry, philosophy, 
history, the drama, rhetoric, and versifica- 
tion 



An Old-Time Friendship 



95 



tion were the chief topics to which this 
activity was addressed, and beside the set 
treatises in which these matters were avow- 
edly discussed, there was scarcely a preface 
or a pamphlet, on whatever ostensible sub- 
ject, which did not enter into a considera- 
tion of these questions of the day. 

It was in the midst of such conditions 
as these that young Philip Sidney founded 
what Gabriel Harvey called the Areopagus. 
There is a pastoral poem extant, " made by 
Sir Philip Sidney upon his meeting with his 
two worthy friends and fellow-poets, Sir 
Edward Dyer and Master Fulke Greville." 
A stanza or two will show their relation : 

Joyne, mates, in mirth with me, 
Graunt pleasure to our meeting ; 

Let Pan, our good god, see 
How gratefull is our greeting. 

Joyne hearts and hands, so let it be ; 

Make but one minde in bodies three. 



Ye hymnes and singing skill, 
Of God Apolloe's giving, 



Be 



9 6 



An Old-Time Friendship 



Be prest our reedes to fill 
With sound of musicke living, 

Joyne hearts and hands, so let it be ; 
Make but one minde in bodies three. 



Now joyned be our hands, 
Let them be ne'r a sunder, 

But linkt in binding bands 
By metamorphoz'd wonder. 

So should our sever'd bodies three 

As one for ever joyned be. 

This " happy, blessed trinity," as it is 
called in another stanza, was the heart of 
the Areopagus. About these were clustered 
a chosen few, deeply interested in poetry 
and in theories about it. Edmund Spenser, 
then newly come to Court, could not have 
failed to be drawn into such a brotherhood. 
Gabriel Harvey, a somewhat pragmatical 
Cambridge don, surveyed the proceedings 
from afar, and penned jocular or censorius 
letters to Spenser on the subjects discussed, 
all of which letters he carefully preserved 

in 



An Old-Time Friendship 97 

in copy and printed with some of Spenser's 
a few years later, for general edification 
and the particular aggrandizement of Ga- 
briel's own importance. It is unlikely that 
there was anything in the nature of a for- 
mal association among these young men. 
They were all interested in poetry, and each 
of them — even Harvey in Latin — was a 
" practitioner " of it. The most important 
question of the day was the possibility of a 
future for English literature. It must be re- 
membered that at the date of the Areopagus, 
in the late seventies and early eighties, not 
a play of Marlowe, Shakespeare, or Jonson 
had been written ; that Bacon was a pro- 
mising lad occasionally at Court with his 
father, dubbed by the Queen for his clever 
answers her "little Lord Chancellor," and 
that the Faerie Queene was in the making, 
but not yet known to any save Harvey, 
who seems to have set little store by it. 
To be satisfied with Surrey or Gascoigne, 

recently 



9 8 An Old-Time Friendship 



recently dead and accounted " the chief of 
our late rhymers/ ' was out of the question. 
The Italians had done better than this. But 
even the Italians had not equalled the an- 
cients, who, in place of the rational admi- 
ration which the literatures of Greece and 
Rome must ever inspire in the man who 
will be at the pains to know them, were 
adored by these Latin-taught young men 
with a superstitious reverence that seems 
to have lingered in the ferules of their 
schoolmasters from the Middle Ages and 
to have been imparted, like much of the 
education of the time, non sine lacrimis. It 
was thus that the question of a possible 
future for English literature was narrowed 
into an endeavor to foist classical metres 
upon English verse, and English hexame- 
ters, alcaics, sapphics, and asclepiads be- 
came the popular metrical experiments of 
the day. 

Spenser appears to have toyed with these 

experiments ; 



An Old-Time Friendship 



99 






experiments ; for all this while he was seri- 
ously at work on the Faerie ^ueene. In a 
letter to Harvey, Spenser is merry on the 
subject, likening certain words, to the cus- 
tomary accent of which the new versifica- 
tion did violence, to " a lame gosling that 
draweth one leg after the other," and con- 
cluding with an irony which may not have 
been altogether appreciated by Harvey : 
" But it must be won with custom, and 
rough words must be subdued with use. 
For why, a God's name, may not we, as 
else the Greeks, have the kingdom of our 
own language?" Not such was the attitude 
of Sidney, who felt that the question was 
not to be solved except by extensive and 
serious experiment. With an enthusiasm 
and diligence which is amazing in view of 
his social and political activity, Sidney set 
himself to the study of this problem and to 
the demonstration of its success or failure. 
From the minute details of the rules of 

classical 



LofC. 



ioo An Old-Time Friendship 

classical prosody to the grasp and assimila- 
tion of the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, 
all was the subject of Sidney's attention. 
Widening the field to include a considera- 
tion of his contemporaries, French, Spanish, 
or Italian, he set himself to transplant into 
England whatever might beautify and en- 
rich her literature, and accomplished what 
his short life permitted — his rapturous 
sonnets, Astrophel and Stella, his romantic 
pastoral, Arcadia, and his noble Defence of 
Poesie — not in the spirit of abject imita- 
tion, but with that free play of the imagi- 
nation and original poetic instinct which 
are his distinguishing characteristics. The 
shadows and black clouds of disfavor which 
Elizabeth permitted at times to sweep 
across the blessed light of the royal favor 
were not without their advantages to her 
disconsolate courtiers. It was in a period 
of eclipse such as this, the result of his 
bold letter to the Queen arguing against 

her 



An Old-Time Friendship 101 

her marriage with the Duke of Anjou, that 
Sidney found the leisure for the writing of 
his Arcadia and for carrying on the experi- 
ments just mentioned. It was Sidney's use 
of classical and Italian forms of poetry, his 
writing of sonnets, pastorals, his employ- 
ment of " conceit " and a flowery, poetical 
diction, that gave sanction and currency to 
all these things. They would have existed 
without him, for they were in the air, 
the very perfume of the time ; but it was 
something for English poetry to have had 
the budding of this blossoming spring at 
the hands of this sane and gracious poet, this 
noble, sound-hearted man. 



"AN AERY OF CHILDREN 
LITTLE EYASES" 




*°5 



V 

"An Aery of Children 
Little Eyases 



a 



There is, sir, an aery of children, 
little eyases, that cry out on the 
top of question and are most tyran- 
nically clapped for 't : these are now the 
fashion, and so berattle the common stages 
— so they call them — that many wearing 
rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare 
scarce come thither. 

" What, are they children ? who main- 
tains 'em ? how are they escoted ? Will 
they pursue the quality no longer than they 
can sing ? will they not say afterwards, if 
they should grow themselves to common 

players 



106 An Aery of Children 

players — as it is most like, if their means 
are no better — their writers do them 
wrong, to make them exclaim against their 
own succession ? 

" ' Faith, there has been much to do on 
both sides ; and the nation holds it no sin 
to tarre them to controversy : there was, 
for a while, no money bid for argument, 
unless the poet and the player went to cuffs 
in the question. 

" Is 't possible ? 

" Oh, there has been much throwing 
about of brains. 

" Do the boys carry it away ? 

"Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules 
and his load too/' 

From this well-known passage of Ham- 
let it appears that a certain company of boy 
actors, who are likened for their forward- 
ness to a nest-full of fledgling hawks, are 
in great popularity for their high-pitched 
eloquence and for the satirical intent of 

their 



Little Eyases 107 

their plays. There was controversy between 
them and other companies, and the town 
did not hesitate to set them ("tarre them") 
like dogs upon each other, and to grant 
that the boys, who apparently looked down 
upon their opponents' theatres as " common 
stages/' had the better of the argument. 

In the London of Spenser's boyhood 
there was not a single theatre, and Eliza- 
beth ruled nearly twenty years before the 
first playhouses were erected. The yards of 
several inns, it is true, were used for bear- 
baiting, cock-fighting, or theatrical exhi- 
bitions, as the case might be; and several 
companies of strolling actors gained a pre- 
carious living in and about London under 
the ostensible patronage of certain nobles. 
The crudity of their performances was the 
laughing-stock of the courtiers, and many 
were the jokes which were cracked at 
the expense of the English playwright, of 
whom it was said that " in three hours 

runs 



108 An Aery of Children 

runs he through the world . . . makes 
children men, men to conquer kingdoms, 
murder monsters, bringeth gods from hea- 
ven and devils from hell." At Court, at the 
Universities, and in the societies of the Inns 
of Court, another species of drama flour- 
ished, and with it another species of actor. 
Here was the domain of cultivated life and 
the sanction of classical study; and the 
actors, when not courtiers themselves or the 
gentlemen of the Inner or Middle Tem- 
ple or of Gray's Inn, were the well-trained 
boys of her Majesty's Chapel or of the choir 
of the Cathedral of St. Paul's. Into what 
depths of antiquity the training of Eng- 
lish choir-boys for theatrical performances 
extends, it would be difficult to determine. 
Considering the customary performance of 
miracles and moralities by craft-guilds as 
well as clericals and the frequent acting 
of plays of Plautus and Terence in Latin 
at the Universities in the Middle Ages, 

the 



Little Eyases 109 

the practice must have been of very early 
origin. If the choir-boy was not the ear- 
liest actor, the choir-master was certainly 
among the earliest playwrights. The duties 
of Richard Edwards, Doctor of Music and 
Master of her Majesty's Chapel, must have 
been multifarious. For not only did he 
train and lead his choir and accompany 
them on the organ ; it was his duty also 
to compose new sacred music and secular 
songs, to devise pageants and " shews/' to 
write plays and to teach his young charges 
how to act them to the " contentation " of 
the Queen. 

In the fragmentary and disjointed re- 
cords of the office of the Queen's Revels, 
the function of which was to furnish enter- 
tainment to the Court on holidays and 
high days, are many entries of payments 
for actors, for properties, and services, apper- 
taining to the presentations of masques and 
plays before the Queen. Among them, the 

mention 



no An Aery of Children 



mention of the Children of Paul's, of Wind- 
sor, of Westminster, and of her Majesty's 
Chapel are not infrequent, and many pay- 
ments are recorded to their Masters. This 
is the usual form : " Payde upon the coun- 
cell's warraunt dated at Westminster the 
ninth daye of March 1561 to Sebastyan 
Westcot, Master of the children of Polls 
for an Enterlude played before the Queen's 
Majesty v'f xiij s iiij d ." Some entries sug- 
gest the nature of the performance. Thus a 
furrier was paid for "ten dosen of Kydd's 
skinnes together with the woorkmanship 
by him and his servaunts doone upon the 
Hobby horses that served the children 
of Westminster in the Triumphe, where 
parris [Paris] wan the Christall sheeld for 
vienna at the turneye and barryers ; " and 
the history of "cipio [Scipio] Africanus 
showen at Whitehall the sondaye night 
after newe yeares daie [was] enacted by 
the children of Pawles furnished in this 

Ofiyce 



Little Eyases 



iii 



Offyce with sondrey garments and trium- 
phant ensignes and banners newe made 
and their head-pieces of white sarcenett, 
scarfes and garters etc." From a series of 
entries intended to convey no more than 
the information of certain extra charges 
and the reasons for them, a momentary 
glimpse of the life of these little actors may 
be obtained. These entries shall tell their 
own story : 

"Item, for the diets and lodging of 
divers children at saint Jones whiles thay 
Learned theier parts and jestures meet for 
the Mask in which ix of them did serve 
at Hampton Coorte xxxiij s iiij d . 

" To Bruton of Powles wharfe for a 
Bardge and vj ores [oars] with ij Tylt Whir- 
reyes that carryed the Masking geare and 
Children with theier tutors and an Italian 
Woman the which to dresse theier heads 
as also the Taylers, property makers and 
haberdashers xxiiij 3 . 

"To 



n2 An Aery of Children 

"To William Skarboro for fryer and 
vittels for the Children and theier attend- 
ants whiles thay wayted to know whether 
her Majesty would have the Maske that 
nighte ix s vj d . 

" For trymmyng the Children on Shrove- 
tuisdaye xij d . 

" To Mother sparo for the lodgings with 
ffyer and ffoode that nighte and in the 
Morning whiles they staied for botes [boats 
at Kingston] xij d . 

"To Thomas Totnall for ffyer and vit- 
tells for the Children when they landed, 
sum of them being sick and colde and 
hungry v s vj d ." 

Let us hope that Mother Sparrow was 
kind to her little charges, and that Thomas 
Totnall, furnishing fire and victuals, did 
not skimp the weary little fellows in their 
comforts. 

That abuses should have arisen in this 
traffic was to be expected. In the early 

years 



Little Eyases 



IX 3 



years of Elizabeth's reign there was only 
an occasional use of schoolboys or choir- 
boys for performances at Court. But while 
the boys of Westminster School and the 
Merchant Tailors' continued occasional and 
amateur performers, the Children of the 
Chapel and those of St. Paul's were soon 
formed into regularly organized professional 
companies each with its place of popular 
performance in the city, either the singing- 
school or a theatre constructed for them. 
The excuse for the earlier popular theatri- 
cal representations of the day was that of 
practice for the Queen's entertainment, for 
without the direct patronage of the Court 
no company could long maintain itself. 
The choir-master, thus converted into a 
theatrical manager, added an eager pursuit 
of popular favor to his former duty as a 
purveyor of entertainment to the Court. In 
1597 letters patent were issued under the 
great seal authorizing Nathaniel Gyles, then 

Master 



1 1 4 An Aery of Children 

Master of the Chapel, and his deputies " to 
take such children as he . . . should thinke 
meete, in cathedrall, collegiate, parish 
churches or chappells " for the better ser- 
vice of her Majesty's Chapel. This power 
Gyles abused by taking likely and clever 
lads from their schools and even apprentices 
from their masters, " being children noe 
way able or fitt for singing, nor by anie the 
sayd confederates endeavoured to be taught 
to singe," and employing them, as the peti- 
tion proceeds to set forth, for the manager's 
" owne corrupte gayne and lucre, to errecte, 
sett upp, furnish and maynteyne a play 
house or place in the Blackfryers within 
your Majesties cytie of London, and to the 
end they mighte the better furnish theire 
sayd playes and enterludes with childeren 
whome they thought moste fittest to acte 
and furnish the said playes." 

Relieved of its legal verbiage, this com- 
plaint proceeds to relate how one Thomas 

Clifton, 



Little Eyases 115 

Clifton, a gentleman's son of some thirteen 
years of age, had been kidnapped on his way 
to school and brought to the playhouse in 
Blackfriars " amongst a companie of lewde 
and dissolute mercenary players/ ' how the 
boy was given, " in most scornfull disdayn- 
full and dispightful manner, a scroll of 
paper conteyning parte of one of theire 
playes and . . . commaunded to learne the 
same by harte," and told that if he did not 
obey " he should be surely whipped/' To 
the father of young Clifton, who sought 
his son at the theatre, Gyles was exceed- 
ingly abusive, not only refusing to release 
the boy, but declaring that " if the Queene 
. . . would not beare them furth in that 
accion, she should gett another to execute 
her commission for them" [that is, as far 
as they were concerned] ; and replying to 
Clifton's objection that " it was not fitt 
that a gentleman of his sorte should have 
his sonne and heire to be so basely used," 

that 



n6 An Aery of Children 



that " they had aucthoritie sufficient soe to 
take any noble mans sonne in this land, and 
did then and there use theis speeches, that 
were it not for the benefitt they made by 
the sayd play house, whoe would, should 
serve the Cappell with childeren for them/' 
Indeed it was not until the matter was 
brought to the attention of the Queen's 
privy council that a warrant was at last is- 
sued compelling Gyles to release some of 
the boys, and the upshot of the whole mat- 
ter was a censure by the Star Chamber by 
which all " assurances made to him con- 
cerning the said house or plays " were de- 
clared utterly void. 

Of the seven boys named in the com- 
plaint as thus violently inducted into the 
theatrical profession, two at least remained 
in it. These were the notable actor and play- 
wright, Nathaniel Field, and little Salathiel 
Pavey, who achieved reputation as an actor 
before his death at the early age of thirteen. 

By 



Little Eyases 117 

By the irony of fate, Field was the son of 
a preacher who wrote in 1 58 1 a letter to 
the Earl of Leicester " adjuring him not to 
encourage those wickednesses and abuses 
that are wont to be nourished by those 
impure interludes and plays." On an acci- 
dent at one of the theatres, in which several 
persons were hurt, the same zealous man 
published a pamphlet beginning : " A Godly 
Exhortation by occasion of the late judg- 
ment of God shewed at Paris Garden,' ' and 
ending: "given to all estates for their in- 
struction, concerning the keeping of the 
Sabbath day, by John Field Minister of 
the Word of God.' ' John Field died whilst 
Nathaniel was still an infant, and was thus 
spared much unhappiness. When Nathan- 
iel was carried off by Gyles he was a scholar 
at Westminster School and could have been 
little over twelve or thirteen years of age. 
In 1600 and the next year, Field was the 
chief actor in Jonson's difficult satirical 

plays, 



n8 An Aery of Children 

plays, Cynthia s Revels and the Poetaster. 
Several years later he took the title-role in 
Epiccene or the Silent Woman. In this play 
the perplexities of identification reach the 
highest point as the silent woman in the 
fifth act is suddenly metamorphosed into a 
noisy boy, and the actor must thus pretend 
to be that which he is not, to delude his 
auditors into believing him not to be that 
which he is. Field was a kind of protege of 
Jonson's, who related years after that the 
boy was his scholar and had read to him 
the satires of Horace and some epigrams of 
Martial. It is pleasant to contemplate the 
picture thus presented to us of the father- 
less boy, stolen away from his mother and 
deprived of his schooling, gaining so power- 
ful a friend as the great dramatist and dic- 
tator, with the latter's attempt to supply 
in part the boy's interrupted education. 
Salathiel Pavey was also among the actors 
of the earlier two plays just mentioned, but 

suffered 



Little Eyases 



n 9 



suffered an untimely fate. As appears from 
the verses below, this child was renowned 
for his ability to play the parts of old men, 
and must have been deeply beloved by Jon- 
son to have been so embalmed, fleeting little 
creature that he was, in the clear amber of 
the following fine epitaph : 

Weep with me, all you that read 

This little story : 
And know, for whom a teare you shed, 

Death's selfe is sorry. 
'T was a child, that so did thrive 

In grace and feature, 
As Heaven and Nature seem'd to strive 

Which own'd the creature. 
Yeares he numbred scarce thirteene 

When Fates turn'd cruell, 
Yet three fill'd Zodiacs had he been 

The Stage's Jewell ; 
And did act, what now we moan, 

Old men so duely, 
As, sooth, the Parca thought him one, 

He plai'd so truely. 
So, by error to his fate 

They all consented ; 

But 



i2o An Aery of Children 

But viewing him since (alas, too late !) 

They have repented ; 
And have sought, to give new birth, 

In bathes to steep him ; 
But, being so much too good for earth, 

Heaven vowes to keep him. 

An examination of the repertoire of 
these boy companies discloses the fact that 
they performed for the most part plays of 
a satirical and allegorical intent : Peele's 
Arraignment of Paris, in which the apple of 
Ate is taken from Venus and reawarded to 
the peerless nymph and queen, Eliza ; Lyly's 
Endimion, in which is figured forth in elab- 
orate allegory the vain love of Leicester 
for Cynthia, that changeful, brilliant lumi- 
nary and queen of night ; Cynthia's Revels 
and the Poetaster, in which the gilded life 
of courtiers and the foibles and jealousies of 
the poets are respectively satirized. Widely 
contrasted were such plays with the stirring 
dramas of Marlowe and Shakespeare with 

which 



Little Eyases 121 

which the popular stages were ringing, in 
which the characters were no mere witty 
caricatures of the follies that disported their 
velvets and plumes at Court or in Paul's 
Walk, the hero no dainty Euphuist apostro- 
phizing the moon in measured cadence and 
with ingenious simile, but merry Prince 
Hal with his escapades in the free life of 
Cheapside, his blunt courtship of the coy 
Princess of France, and the valor, the un- 
dertone of religious feeling, and the innate 
manliness, that made Henry the Fifth the 
popular English hero. 

Toward the end of Elizabeth's reign the 
boy companies made a strong effort to ob- 
tain the favorable suffrage of the public. 
They were notoriously active in what was 
known as the " war of the theatres," in 
which the dramatists carried on a seem- 
ingly internecine conflict by means of a 
satirical representation of each other on the 
stage. They procured, too, the services of 

some 



122 An Aery of Children 

some of the greatest playwrights of the age, 
so that Chapman, Marston, and Jonson all 
wrote for them for a time. It is not to be 
doubted that to all this Shakespeare alludes 
in the passage from Hamlet quoted above. 
We have here the deliberate judgment of a 
noble and successful rival on the unusual ef- 
forts of the boy companies to curry popular 
favor. It is in the kindly and humorsome 
vein that we might expect of the master- 
poet, whose only criticism is contained in 
the hint that at some time the boys might 
come to feel that their playwrights had 
"done them wrong" in thus setting them in 
opposition to that profession in which most 
of them were likely to continue as men. 

Some of the contemporary dramas utilized 
the circumstance that boys were the actors 
to present us bits of realistic painting of the 
manners of the time. Thus in Beaumont's 
Knight of the Burning Pestle, a satirical parody 
of the absurdity of the romantic adventures 

often 



Little Eyases 



123 



often put on the stage, the prologue is spoken 
by a boy who is easily induced with a couple 
of shillings to permit an apprentice to be 
poked into the play and to assume willy- 
nilly the role of hero throughout. 

In the Return from Parnassus the prologue 
is begun by a boy who breaks down after 
" Spectators we will act a comedy." Where- 
upon the stage-keeper tries to prompt him, 
but has not the matter in his book; so he 
scolds the lad and lets out the reason of his 
forgetfulness : 

" You would be whipt, you raskall : you 
must be sitting up all night at cardes, when 
you should be conning your part." 

" Its all long of you," sobs the boy, " I 
could not get my part a night or two before, 
that I might sleepe on it." 

The stage direction concludes: "the stage- 
keeper carrieth the boy away under his 
arme." Sobs, struggles, and well-directed 
kicking we may imagine for ourselves. 

Cynthia s 



i24 An Aery of Children 

Cynthia s Revels opens with a lively con- 
tention between three of " the children ,3 
as to which is to speak the prologue. They 
decide the matter by drawing lots, and the 
two unsuccessful claimants amuse them- 
selves by badgering the speaker and try- 
ing to put him out of his part. After this, 
all fall to mimicking the auditors that 
are accustomed to sit on the stage, cut- 
ting precisely the antics which we might 
expect of a parcel of lively urchins under 
such circumstances, and employing an as- 
severation, " Would I were whipped ! ,! 
only too appropriate, we may fear, to the 
method of their training. Here is a bit of 
their mimicry. The dashes, in Jonson's 
orthography, denote the airy whiffs of the 
young mimic as he smokes or — as they 
then styled it — " drinks " and exhales his 
"tabacco." 

" Now, sir, suppose I am one of your 
gentile auditors, that am come in (having 

paid 



Little Eyases 125 

paid my money at the doore, with much 
adoe) and here I take my place, and sit 
downe : I have my three sorts of tabacco in 
my pocket, my light by me, and thus I be- 
gin. t By this light, I wonder that any man 
is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits 
play here — they do act like so many wrens 
... — not the fifth part of a good face 
amongst them all. — And then their musick 
is abominable — able to stretch a man's 
ears worse than ten — pillories, and their 
ditties — most lamentable things, like the 
pitifull fellows that make them — poets. 
By this vapour [and we may be sure that 
the little rogue puffed out his smoke with 
great unction], an 'twere not for tabacco 
— I think — the very [smell] of hem 
would poison mee, I should not dare to 
come in at their gates. A man were bet- 
ter visit fifteen jayls, — or a dozen or two 
hospitals — than once adventure to come 
near them.' How is 't ? Well ? 

" Excellent : 



126 An Aery of Children 

"Excellent: give me my cloake [the 
badge of the speaker of the prologue] . 

" Stay ; you shall see me doe another 
now ; but a more sober, or better-gather' d 
gallant ; that is (as it may be thought) some 
friend or well-wisher to the house : And 
here I enter. 

" What ? upon the stage, too ? 

" Yes : and I step forth like one of the 
children, and aske you, < Would you have a 
stoole, sir ? ' 

"'A stoole, boy?' 

" c Aye, sir, if you 'le give me six pence, 
I 'le fetch you one.' 

" ' For what I pray thee ? what shall I doe 
with it ? ' 

" < O lord, sir ! will you betray your igno- 
rance so much ? Why throne your selfe in 
state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, 
sir.' 

" ' Awaye, wagge ; what, wouldst thou 
make an implement of me ? Slid the boy 

takes 



Little Eyases 127 

takes mee for a peece of perspective (I hold 
my life), or some silke curtain.' " 

We may feel sure that these sketches 
were not without their true originals in 
life, and perchance not always in need of 
the intervention of a poet for their presen- 
tation. 

Women first appeared as actresses on the 
stage about the time of the Restoration, and 
in a few years the boy actor was a thing 
of the past. Francis Kynaston is reputed 
to have been the last male actor to appear 
in female parts. Kynaston was famed for 
his delicate beauty and it is of him that 
Cibber relates the story, that King Charles, 
coming earlier than was expected to the 
playhouse, became impatient that the play 
did not begin, until informed that the Queen 
was unhappily not yet shaven. 



VI 
A GROATSWORTH OF WIT 



1 3 1 




VI 



A Groatsworth of Wit 

Late in the summer of 1 593, a young 
man lay dying in low lodgings near 
Dowgate, " sore sick of a surfeit 
which he had taken with drinking." De- 
graded with sin, pinched with want, starv- 
ing and dying in the street, except for the 
charity of a shoemaker's wife, almost a 
beggar like himself, he had reached the 
end of a short and wasted life, and now too 
late lay repentant in the agony of helpless 
humiliation. A waste of raging and beat- 
ing waves seemed to him to have flowed 
between his miserable present and the sim- 
ple, godly household of his childhood, the 

memory 



132 



A Groatsworth of Wit 



memory of which had inspired him with 
some of his sweetest songs. The one year 
of calm and righteous life which he had 
spent with his fair and newly-wedded wife 
stood out in his memory like an island of 
bliss in an ocean of bitterness ; and he re- 
curred again and again to the face of his 
little son, for years deserted and forgotten, 
and groaned in agony as he thought how 
that innocent life might fall and crumble 
like his own under a burden of sin. 

For the rest, it seemed a hideous dream, 
a very orgy of weakness, folly, and wicked- 
ness. At Cambridge Robert Greene had 
ruffled it with gay and roistering compan- 
ions and, travelling into Italy, had justified 
the grave words of the Queen's old tutor, 
Roger Ascham, who had warned fathers : 
" Suffer not your sons to pass the Alps, for 
they shall learn nothing there but pride, 
blasphemy and atheism." In London after 
a short period of study, Greene plunged 

into 



A Groatsworth of Wit 133 

into excesses of life and conduct from which 
he revolted in his saner moments. At last he 
became the associate and boon companion 
of thieves and outcasts, and fell to depths 
whence self-respect could no longer recall 
him. In the days of Queen Elizabeth 
men had not yet learned to despise the 
devil. They believed in his actual exist- 
ence, horns, hoofs and all. And although 
they dallied with him — as men have dal- 
lied, alas, in all ages — they were often over- 
come with terror, like Faustus, at their 
dealings with him. It is this which gives 
a tragic pathos to the despairing words of 
the dying Robert Greene, and shakes our 
modern skepticism into something like re- 
spect for the efficacy of a death-bed repent- 
ance. 

The sins of Robert Greene lay heavy 
upon him even in the midst of his bad life. 
He tells us in his pamphlet, The Repentance, 
how he received an "inward motion in 

Saint 



134 A Groatsworth of Wit 



Saint Andrew's Church in the city of Nor- 
wich at a lecture or sermon preached by a 
godly learned man. . . . Whosoever was 
worst, I knew myself to be as bad as he : 
for being new come from Italy (where I 
learned all the villainies under heaven) I 
was drowned in pride . . . and gluttony 
with drunkenness was my only delight. At 
this sermon the terror of God's judgment 
did manifestly teach me that my exer- 
cises were damnable and that I should be 
wiped out of the book of life, if I did not 
speedily repent my looseness of life. ... I 
began to call unto mind the danger of my 
soul ... in so much as, sighing, I said in 
myself: ' Lord have mercy upon me, and 
send me grace to amend and become a new 
man/ " But returning to his " copesmates," 
they rallied him on his " solemn humor," 
" calling me Puritan and a Precisian, and 
wished that I might have a pulpit . . . that 
by their foolish persuasion the good and 

wholesome 



A Groatsworth of Wit 135 



wholesome lesson I had learned went quite 
out of my remembrance/ ' 

There were other thoughts in the mind 
of the dying man. He remembered an 
early ambition that had once glowed within 
him : to be a poet and create those forms 
of beauty in musical words, which rendered 
their makers, in the estimation of men, the 
peers of kings and princes. The reputation 
of Edmund Spenser, the great "new poet" 
at Court, burned with a steady, holy flame ; 
and the splendid boast of the Faerie Queene 
was on the lips of many, who agreed that 
truly this beautiful poem, dedicated " to the 
Most High, Mightie and Magnificent Em- 
peresse, . . . Elizabeth, by the Grace of 
God Queene of England, France, Ireland 
and Virginia/ ' was " to live with the eter- 
nity of her fame." And what of the work 
of Robert Greene? His heart fell within 
him as he contrasted this priceless achieve- 
ment with his sweet, twittering lyrics and 

the 



*3 6 A Groats worth of Wit 

the scores of trifling pamphlets scribbled for 
bread, some of them wrung from his very 
heart-strings. He thought of the rewrit- 
ing, patching, and making of plays for the 
fickle London play-goers, and his half-suc- 
cess, half-failure on the stage. Greene, like 
most of the earlier dramatists, was prob- 
ably an actor as well as a playwright, and 
in the moments when his finer nature re- 
asserted itself, may have felt, like his great 
and successful rival, Shakespeare, the degra- 
dation of an art the practitioners of which 
were coupled on the statute books with 
"rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars." 
It was but a broken career at best, and the 
mind of the dying player reverted to the 
day on which he had taken up this ignoble 
profession. He was sitting beside a coun- 
try hedge-row penniless and disowned, and 
crying out upon the untowardness of his 
fate, when he was accosted by a stranger 
from the other side of the hedge. When 

the 



A Groatsworth of Wit 



J 37 



the stranger approached "he saluted Robert 
in this sort: 

" ' Gentleman/ quoth he, ' — for you so 
seem — I have by chance heard you dis- 
course some part of your grief, which ap- 
peareth to be more than you will discover, 
or I can conceit. But if you vouchsafe such 
simple comfort as my ability will yield, 
assure yourself that I will endeavor to do 
the best that either may procure your profit 
or bring you pleasure : the rather, for that 
I suppose you are a scholar, and pity it is 
that men of learning should live in lack.' 

" Roberto, wondering to hear such good 
words, for that this iron age affords few 
that esteem of virtue, returned him thank- 
ful gratulations, and — urged by necessity 
— uttered his present grief, beseeching his 
advice how he might be employed. 

" * Why easily,' quoth he, ' and greatly 
to your benefit ; for men of my profession 
get by scholars their whole living/ 

" < What 



*3 8 A Groatsworth of Wit 

" * What is your profession ? ' said Roberto. 

" * Truly, sir/ said he, * I am a player/ 

" ' A player ! ' quoth Roberto, ' I took you 
rather for a gentleman of great living ; for if 
by outward habit men should be censured, 
I can tell you, you would be taken for a 
substantial man.' 

" ' So am I where I dwell/ quoth the 
player, ' reputed able at my proper cost 
to build a Windmill. What though the 
world once went hard with me, when I 
was fain to carry my playing fardle a foot- 
back. Tempora mutantur. I know you know 
the meaning of it better than I, but I thus 
conster it : it is otherwise now ; for my 
very share in playing apparel will not be 
sold for two hundred pounds/ 

" ' Truly/ said Roberto, ' it is strange that 
you should so prosper in that vain practice, 
for that it seems to me your voice is nothing 
gracious.' 

" * Nay then/ said the player, ' I mislike 

your 



A Groatsworth of Wit 139 

your judgment. Why, I am as famous for 
Delphrigus, the king of the fairies, as ever 
was any of my time. The twelve labors of 
Hercules have I terribly thundered on the 
stage, and placed three scenes of the devil 
on the highway to heaven/ 

" * Have you so ? ' said Roberto, ' then I 
pray you pardon me.' 

" ' Nay more/ quoth the player, ( I can 
serve to make a pretty speech, for I was a 
country author, passing at a moral ; for it 
was I that penned the moral of Mans Wit, 
the Dialogue of Dives, and for seven years' 
space was absolute interpreter of the pup- 
pets. But now my almanac is out of date : 

The people make no estimation, 
Of morals teaching education. 

Was not this pretty for a plain rime extem- 
pore ? If ye will ye shall have more.' 

" ' Nay, it is enough,' said Roberto, ' but 
how mean you to use me ? ' 

" * Why, sir, in making plays/ said the 

other, 



14° A Groatsworth of Wit 

other, * for which you shall be well paid, 
if you will take the pains/ 

" Roberto, perceiving no remedy, thought 
best to respect his present necessity, to try 
his wit, and went with him willingly ; who 
lodged him at the town's end in a house of 
retail, where what happened our poet, you 
shall hereafter hear." 

From this the dying man's mind wan- 
dered on to his dramatic career ; to his 
journey in Denmark and Saxony, with the 
Earl of Leicester's players, the first com- 
pany of English actors to go abroad, and 
his sobriquet amongst them of " Robert 
the Parson." There, too, was his failure 
to catch, in his big, mouthing, bombastic 
Alphonsus, the secret of the " mighty line " 
and passion of Marlowe's ¥ arnburlaine y with 
the praises of which the town was ringing ; 
and there was his jealousy and the innuen- 
does of his pamphlets against another rival 
that surpassed him, Thomas Kyd, who 

wrote 



A Groatsworth of Wit 14- 1 

wrote the original Hamlet, Success ? Yes, 
there were successes too ; for the ground- 
lings had approved the " moral/' A Looking 
Glasse for London, which, in one of his re- 
pentant moods, |ie had written with the 
Lord Mayor's young son, Thomas Lodge, 
and the life and spirit of his vivacious un- 
aided plays, Friar Bacon and George a Greene, 
had maintained them in a genuine contem- 
porary popularity. As to his pamphlets, 
everybody read them, "and glad was that 
printer," said Thomas Nashe, " that might 
be so blest to pay him deare for the very 
dregs of his wit." 

And now he dwelt in memory upon his 
fellows of the stage, their bickerings and 
jealousies, their talents and their waste of 
them. Above all towered the threatening 
image of a great and potent spirit that was 
coming to shape order out of this chaos of 
the Elizabethan dramatic world, to wrest 
fortune, position, and esteem from a profes- 
sion 



142 A Groatsworth of Wit 

sion that had cost the lives — and perchance 
the souls — of some of its followers, and to 
leave behind him a monument of literary 
glory unsurpassed in any age. Greene could 
not have foreknown all this, nor have felt 
the coming greatness of Shakespeare, save 
as a kind of portent betokening he knew 
not what. But he did know that a rival had 
arisen to snatch the public favor from Kyd, 
Marlowe, and himself; and it embittered 
his last hours to think that this man, who 
was neither a scholar nor born to even such 
gentry as he himself might boast, should 
march on to triumphant success where he 
had so signally failed. In mingled envy, 
bitterness, repentance, and despair was then 
penned that notorious passage which con- 
tains the first printed allusion to Shake- 
speare, a passage which must speak here 
once more for itself. 

" To those gentlemen, his quondam ac- 
quaintance, that spend their wits in making 

plays, 



A Groats worth of Wit 143 

plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and 
wisdom to prevent his extremities. 

" If woful experience may move you, gen- 
tlemen, to beware, or unheard of wretch- 
edness entreat you to take heed, I doubt 
not but you will look back with sorrow 
on your time past and endeavor with re- 
pentance to spend that which is to come. 
Wonder not — for with thee will I first 
begin — thou famous gracer of tragedians 
[Marlowe], that Greene, who hath said 
with thee like the fool in his heart, ' There 
is no God/ should now give glory unto his 
greatness. For penetrating is his power ; his 
hand lies heavy upon me, he hath spoken 
with a voice of thunder, and I have felt he 
is a God that can punish enemies. Why 
should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so 
blinded, that thou shouldst give no glory 
to the giver ? Is it pestilent Machiavelian 
policy that thou hast studied ? O punish 
folly ! What are his rules but mere con- 
fused 



144 



A Groatsworth of Wit 



fused mockeries, able to extirpate in small 
time the generation of mankind ? . . . And 
wilt thou, my friend, be his disciple ? Look 
unto me, by him persuaded to that liberty, 
and thou shalt find it an infernal bond- 
age. I know the least of my demerits merit 
this miserable death, but wilful striving 
against known truth exceedeth all the ter- 
rors of my soul. Defer not, with me, 
till this last point of extremity, for little 
knowest thou how in the end thou shalt 
be visited. 

" With thee I join young Juvenal, that 
biting satirist, that lastly with me together 
writ a comedy. [Lodge, not Nashe, for the 
Looking Glass e for London is a comedy, de- 
spite heretical opinion, and a satire ; and it 
was written by Greene and Lodge.] Sweet 
boy, might I advise thee, be advised and 
get not many enemies by bitter words. In- 
veigh against vain men, for thou canst do 
it, no man better, no man so well. Thou 

hast 



A Groats worth of Wit 145 

hast a liberty to reprove all and none more. 
For one being spoken to, all are offended ; 
none being blamed, no man is injured. . . . 

"And thou [George Peele], no less de- 
serving than the other two, in some things 
rarer, in none inferior, driven, as myself, to 
extreme shifts, a little have I to say to thee ; 
and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would 
swear by sweet Saint George, thou art un- 
worthy better hap, sith thou dependest on 
so mean a stay. 

" Base-minded men, all three of you, if 
by my misery ye be not warned ; for unto 
none of you, like me, sought those burs to 
cleave, those puppets, I mean [the actors], 
that speak from our mouths, those antics 
garnished in our colors. 

" Is it not strange that I, to whom they 
all have been beholding ; is it not like that 
you, to whom they all have been behold- 
ing, shall - — were ye in that case that I am 
now — be both at once of them forsaken ? 

Yes 



146 A Groatsworth of Wit 

Yes trust them not ; for there is an upstart 
crow, beautified with our feathers that, with 
his * tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide,' 
supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a 
blank verse as the best of you ; and being 
an absolute "Johannes factotum, is, in his own 
conceit, the only Shakescene in a country. 
O, that I might entreat your rare wits to 
be employed in more profitable courses, and 
let those apes imitate your past excellence, 
and never more acquaint them with your 
admired inventions. I know the best hus- 
band of you all will never prove an usurer, 
and the kindest of them all will never 
prove a kind nurse. Yet whilst you may, 
seek you better masters, for it is pity men 
of such rare wits should be subject to the 
pleasures of such rude grooms." 

According to tradition Robert Greene 
died the next day, after penning these pa- 
thetic lines to the wife he had so cruelly 
wronged : 

" Sweet 



A Groats worth of Wit 147 

" Sweet Wife : 

As ever there was any good will or 
friendship between thee and me, see this 
bearer, my host, satisfied of his debt : I owe 
him ten pound, and but for him I had per- 
ished in the streets. Forget and forgive 
my wrongs done unto thee, and Almighty 
God have mercy on my soul. Farewell till 
we meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt 
never see me more. 

This 2 of September 

J59 2 
Written by thy dying husband 

Robert Greene." 



VII 
PLAYS IN THE MAKING 




VII 



Plays in the Making 



!5I 



IT would be difficult to find two careers 
more completely in contrast than those 
of Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker. 
Beginning with almost equal disadvantages 
as to education and place in the world, the 
greater poet rose, as we all know, to repute 
in " the quality which he professed," to 
esteem amongst his fellows, to great con- 
temporary fame as a poet (be it ever re- 
membered), and to a handsome competence 
earned by his address and industry as an 
actor, a manager, and a playwright. On the 
other hand amongst the many stories of 
sorrow, want, and privation that belong to 

English 



!5 2 Plays in the Making 

English men of letters, Dekker's is almost 
the saddest of all. The little we know 
of his life presents a weary succession of 
borrowings, imprisonments for debt, and 
prayers for relief in a wilderness of incessant 
toil. The writing of new plays, alone or 
with coadjutors at least as needy as him- 
self, the revamping of old plays, the trim- 
ming of masques for Court, the additions 
of prologues, epilogues, or comic scenes, the 
penning of innumerable pamphlets — the 
incipient journalism of the day — on sub- 
jects realistic, satirical, moral, and even reli- 
gious; these were the tasks of an agile and 
inventive brain, hack-driven and goaded to 
unceasing effort through a period of thirty- 
five years to procure the bare necessities of 
life. In all this writing there is much that 
might well be blotted out, not in scorn but 
with tears of compassion. Yet if we turn 
to Dekker's life, there remains on it no 
breath of aspersion, and that in an age in 

which 



Plays in the Making 153 



which a Marlowe died a death almost too 
disgraceful to relate, in which even the au- 
gust form of Shakespeare casts its shadow 
of the Sonnets into the impenetrable obscu- 
rity of which it is perhaps better not too 
curiously to peer. Dekker's outlook on life 
was sweetened with that charity which 
comes to a good man with the chastening of 
adversity ; his humor and his poetry welled 
spontaneous from a heart which no sorrow 
could make old nor privation wither. It is 
inexpressibly touching to hear such a man 
singing : 

Virtue's branches wither, Virtue pines, 

O pity, pity and alack the time ; 
Vice doth flourish, Vice in glory shines, 

Her gilded boughs above the cedar climb ; 

apostrophizing " sweet content/' and taking 
for his motto : 

Work apace, apace, apace, apace ; 
Honest labor bears a lovely face ; 

Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny ! 

There 



154 Plays in the Making 

There is more of the sigh than of song in 
this little meaningless refrain ; the sigh of a 
heart in troubled equilibrium between the 
impelling force which urges liberty and the 
inexorable restraint of duty. The song is 
the song of a prisoned bird. 

The extraordinary diversity of the careers 
of Shakespeare and Dekker is not explain- 
able wholly by dissimilarity in their per- 
sonal characters. It is dependent as well 
upon the conjunction of circumstances that 
made Shakespeare the most popular drama- 
tist of the most successful theatrical com- 
pany of the time and that threw Dekker, 
on the other hand, into the employ of 
Henslowe and into what became the slav- 
ery of a lifetime. Philip Henslowe was 
one of those shrewd, hard men of common 
stock and coarse fibre who seem predes- 
tined to acquire riches. His illiteracy is 
almost beyond belief, when we consider 
his years of association with the stage ; but 

his 



Plays in the Making 155 

his astuteness and ability to drive a hard 
bargain were held in doubt by no one who 
had ever had dealings with him. Henslowe 
was engaged in various trading enterprises 
before he hit upon theatrical management, 
and was variously a dealer in wood, a dyer, 
the owner of a starch factory, a purchaser 
and seller of real estate, an inn or lodging- 
house keeper, and a pawnbroker. He is 
described as unscrupulously hard to his ten- 
ants, though apparently careful at all times 
to keep well within the bounds of the law. 
He thrived in his ventures and, emulous of 
respectability, figured as a vestryman and 
churchwarden of St. Saviour's, Southwark. 
Between the years 1584 and 161 6, the year 
of his death, Henslowe was interested in 
some five or six theatres, of which the Rose, 
the Swan, the Fortune, and the playhouse 
at Newington Butts were the chief. In 
his management of these houses he must 
have been greatly assisted by the famous 

actor, 



15 6 Plays in the Making 

actor, Edward Alleyn, who had married his 
step-daughter and entered into a kind of 
partnership with him. But Henslowe had 
an ambition even above playhouses. After 
much bargaining and negotiation he con- 
trived to obtain, soon after the accession of 
James, " the mastership of the royal game 
of bears, bulls, and mastiff dogs," thus be- 
coming an officer of the crown. This office 
he retained till his death, and he transmitted 
it to Alleyn. 

Most of our information about Henslowe 
and his traffic with the stage has come down 
to us in a manuscript commonly called 
Henslowe 's Diary. It is really not a diary 
at all, but a species of account-book, con- 
taining memoranda of matters of interest 
to Henslowe in his conduct of the man- 
agement of his several theatres. Neither 
the name of Shakespeare nor that of Beau- 
mont nor of Fletcher, occurs in it. But it 
contains the names of nearly every other 

dramatist 



Edward Alleyn 



Plays in the Making 157 

dramatist of importance during the heyday 
of the Elizabethan age and many of their 
autographs. The volume is a large folio, 
vellum covered, and soiled and grimy with 
use. It is mostly in the illiterate hand- 
writing of Henslowe himself, although 
entries by other scribes, clerks, and parties 
to agreements and receipts therein noted 
are of frequent occurrence. Not only is 
the manuscript badly written and execrably 
spelled, but the entries are much confused 
through the evident desire of its owner to 
utilize every blank page. The book de- 
scended to Alleyn by will, who in turn left 
it to the College of God's Gift, which he 
had charitably founded with his own and 
Henslowe's money, where it still remains at 
Dulwich. Henslowe's Diary has long been 
known to scholars and antiquaries, and has 
unfortunately suffered from this acquaint- 
ance, having lost some of its leaves by tear- 
ing and some of its autographs by excision, 

besides 



*5 8 Plays in the Making 

besides showing, what is worse, the inter- 
polations of the forger. 

As owner and manager of so many thea- 
tres, Henslowe was concerned with the 
procuring of suitable plays, their revision 
and adaptation for given performances, with 
the purchase of materials for his playhouses 
and the making of contracts for the build- 
ing of them, with properties, costumes, and 
the staging of plays, and with payments to 
actors and " sharers," as the partners in the 
theatrical companies were called. All of 
these matters are abundantly illustrated in 
the Diary, together with others kindred but 
not so obvious. From being a mere mana- 
ger, Henslowe came insensibly to be a sort 
of middle-man between the company and 
the playwrights, and banker or money- 
lender for those in his employ, standing 
towards them at times in the relation of 
a patron. Thus we find him advancing 
money " to harey chettell to paye his 

charges 



Plays in the Making 



*59 



charges in the marshallsey " and " to dise- 
charge Mr. Dicker [Dekker] out of the 
counter [the prison for debtors] in powl- 
trey." In like straits, Field writes to him : 
" Father Hinchlow, I am unluckily taken 
on an execution of 30 1 . I can be dis- 
charged for xx 1 . x 1 I have from a friend : 
if now, in my extremity, you will venture 
x 1 more for my liberty, I will never share 
penny till you have it again, and make any 
satisfaction, by writing or otherwise, that 
you can devise." Henslowe's method of 
binding needy playwrights to his service 
was as simple as it was effective. On the 
submission and acceptance of a plan for a 
play an advance of money was easily ob- 
tained, a written memorandum of which 
was made and signed by the playwright. 
Further advances of money were dependent 
upon the precise performance of the play- 
wright's part of the contract ; but all ad- 
vances were so contrived as to leave the 

playwright 



160 Plays in the Making 

playwright always in Henslowe's debt and 
the obligation between the parties was never 
entirely cancelled. Many a piteous appeal 
for money is preserved among the Alleyn 
papers at Dulwich, by which the inner 
workings of this Elizabethan sweating sys- 
tem for the manufacture of plays is dis- 
closed. " Sir, if you do not like this play 
when it is read," writes the obscure drama- 
tist, Robert Daborne, " you shall have the 
other, which shall be finished with all ex- 
pedition ; for, before God, this is a good 
one, and will give you content : howsoever 
you shall never lose a farthing by me, 
wherefor I pray you misdoubt me not; . . . 
and, I pray you, send me ten shillings. 5 ' 
Again : " Sir, your man was with me, who 
found me writing the last scene, which I 
had thought to have brought you to-night, 
but it will be late ere I can do it ; and being 
Saturday night, my occasion urges me to 
request you spare me ten shillings more." 

And 



Plays in the Making 161 

And lastly in great urgency : " Mr. Hinch- 
low, of all friendship let me be beholding 
to you for one twenty shillings, which shall 
be the last I will request till the play be 
fully by us ended/ ' 

In the consideration of plots for new 
plays Henslowe employed the expert advice 
of Alleyn. Thus Daborne writes Henslowe 
that a promised play " shall come upon the 
neck of this new play they are now study- 
ing ; if you please to appoint any hour to 
read to Mr. Alleyn, I will not fail, nor 
after this day lose any time til it be con- 
cluded.' ' The bids of rival companies are 
at times quoted to raise the price of plays, 
a device which does not seem to have proved 
very effective, but which resulted in an 
agreement by one playwright to write only 
for Henslowe's company. Instances are not 
wanting in which the subtle old manager 
appears to have been taken in by writers 
who would not hesitate, could it be safely 

done, 



1 62 Plays in the Making 

done, to palm off old productions for new 
and thus perhaps quit old scores. 

From these battered pages we obtain 
thus a momentary picture of a busy public 
mart for the buying and selling of plays ; 
a glimpse of the wires that moved the pup- 
pets of the time : puppets that played their 
parts in emulation of the puppets of Shake- 
speare, that strained to rival him in his 
might, nay held their own in the judg- 
ment of the contemporary play-goer to the 
enrichment of Henslowe. Henslowe's pa- 
trons seem to have demanded a new play 
about once a fortnight, contenting them- 
selves meanwhile with plays which had al- 
ready received their suffrage. It was not 
customary to repeat a play on successive 
days. Popular plays were repeated, how- 
ever, at not infrequent intervals ; thus Mar- 
lowe's Faustus was performed fifteen times 
within a twelvemonth, his Jew of Malta 
and ¥ amburlaine nearly as often, both parts 

of 



Plays in the Making 163 

of the last play being given on two occa- 
sions on successive days. Besides these 
plays of Marlowe, Kyd's Spanish Tragedy 
and a play which Henslowe calls " hary 
vj" enjoyed the greatest popularity among 
the plays still extant and enumerated by 
Henslowe. It was of scenes in this play that 
Thomas Nashe wrote, in a pamphlet con- 
temporary with these entries of Henslowe : 
" Nay what if I prove plays to be no ex- 
treme, but a rare exercise of virtue ? First, 
for the subject of them, for the most part 
it is borrowed out of our English chroni- 
clers, wherein our forefathers' valiant acts 
(that have lain long buried in rusty brass 
and worm-eaten books) are revived, and 
they themselves raised from the grave of 
oblivion and brought to plead their aged 
honors in open presence ; than which what 
can be a sharper reproof of these degenerate 
effeminate days of ours ? How would it 
have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the 

French. 



164 Plays in the Making 

French, to think that after he had lain two 
hundred years in his tomb, he should tri- 
umph again on the stage, and have his bones 
new embalmed with the tears of ten thou- 
sand spectators at least (at several times), 
who, in the tragedian that represents his 
person, imagine they behold him fresh 
bleeding." The most captious critics grant 
to Shakespeare these scenes of an old play 
refashioned by his hand and raised to an 
immediate and overwhelming popularity. 
The Elizabethan play-goer with unerring 
instinct singled out for his signal approval 
the great dramas of Kyd and Marlowe and 
the unsurpassable work of the master play- 
wright. 

The lists of Henslowe exhibit many titles 
similar to those borne by plays of Shake- 
speare. We meet with an Adronicus, a 
" Venesyons [Venice' s\ coniodey" a " Seser and 
Pompey" and a "Harry the V." Neither 
identity of title nor sameness of plot need 

mislead 



Plays in the Making 165 

mislead the reader of Elizabethan litera- 
ture, who soon learns that there are some 
half dozen plays, Latin and English, on 
Julius Caesar and on Richard the Third, 
three Romeos and Antonies, and at least 
two Hamlets, Timoris, and Lears. When a 
character caught the public fancy, his story 
was followed up in a second play, at times 
even in a third. It is thus that the career of 
the ideal Englishman of action, King Henry 
the Fifth, is carried out in the trilogy of the 
two parts of Henry the Fourth and Henry 
the Fifth. Falstaff, a great popular favor- 
ite, runs through the same three dramas to 
appear once more in the Merry Wives of 
Windsor, according to a pleasing tradition 
upon the express wish of the Queen to be- 
hold the fat knight in love. But not only 
was a success of this kind followed up by 
those who had wrought it, it was emu- 
lated by humbler rivals in the imitation 
of the subjects, personages, and situations of 

the 



1 66 Plays in the Making 

the successful drama. The character of Fal- 
staff was originally represented under the 
name of Sir John Oldcastle, a dissolute com- 
panion (not otherwise distinguished) of the 
wild young prince in an old play on the 
Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. Shake- 
speare at first retained the name Oldcastle, 
as appears from certain traces in the quarto 
edition of Henry the Fourth and from the 
prince's punning reply to FalstafPs ques- 
tion : " Is not my hostess of the tavern a 
most sweet wench ? — As the honey of Hy- 
bla, my old lad of the castle.' ' Shakespeare 
afterwards substituted the name FalstafF, as 
better fitted to "the gross knight" than 
that of Oldcastle, the illustrious Lollard 
of history. On the basis of these circum- 
stances and the great popularity of Henry 
the Fourth, Henslowe procured the writing 
by several of his poets of a play called the 
First Part of Sir John Oldcastle, in which 
ostentatious justice is done to the memory 

of 



Plays in the Making 



167 



of the famous old Lollard, and we are in- 
formed in the prologue : 

It is no pamper'd glutton we present, 
Nor aged counsellor to youthful sin, 
But one whose virtues shone above the rest, 
A valiant martyr and a virtuous peer. 

In this play King Henry may be seen 
once more in contact incognito with the low 
life of London, robbed of his purse and 
winning back his loss from the thief with 
dice on a drum-head. And here, too, a di- 
rect bid is made to rival the popularity of 
Falstaff in the person of a witty, knavish 
priest, Sir John, the Parson of Wrotham. 
Sir John Oldcastle is a readable play yet, 
and shows what four clever men — among 
them no less a person than Michael Dray- 
ton, the author of the Polyolbion — could do 
to stem for the moment the overwhelm- 
ing current of Shakespeare's popularity. 

What Shakespeare received in money for 
a single play we have no means of learning ; 

we 



1 68 Plays in the Making 

we know that he came to London a poor 
lad and retired with a handsome compe- 
tence some twenty years later, realizing the 
greatest fortune which had been made out 
of literature directly or indirectly until we 
come to the golden days of Scott and his 
Waverley Novels. As to Shakespeare's rivals 
in the thraldom of Henslowe, it appears that 
a play might be purchased of Chettle or 
Hey wood for as small a sum as four or six 
pounds, while Chapman, Dekker, or Jon- 
son might demand as much as ten or eleven 
pounds and get it. The disparity between 
the price of a play and the cost of staging 
it has often been dilated upon. For while 
properties and scenes in the modern accep- 
tation of that term were few and simple, 
the costumes of the actors were often of 
great richness and costliness. It has been 
related that Heywood received less for his 
wholly admirable A Woman Killed with 
Kindness than the company laid out for the 

gown 



Plays in the Making 169 



gown of the heroine, and that the costumes 
and caparisons of a play called Cardinal 
Wolsey must have reached a total of more 
than two hundred pounds. When a play 
was very successful, as was Oldcastle, men- 
tioned above, Henslowe occasionally opened 
his heart and presented the authors with a 
gratuity. Ten shillings was thus distributed 
among the four authors of that play, and 
this ridiculous sum may be regarded as the 
height of Henslowe's bounty on these occa- 
sions. Even such matters are duly charged 
to the company by their thrifty manager, 
as appears from such an entry as this : 
" Layd owt for the company, at the mer- 
mayd, when we weare at owre agrement, 
the 21 of aguste 1602, toward our super, 
the sum of ix s ." 

In this mart of Henslowe's some of the 
greatest dramatists served their apprentice- 
ship to the trade. The old manager was a 
notable respecter of persons where fortune 

or 



i7° Plays in the Making 

or success was concerned. Chapman, who 
was born a gentleman, is generally referred 
to in the Diary as " Mr. Chapman,' ' as is 
" Mr. Maxton [Marston] the newe poete ;" 
but " Harey Chettell," " Samwell Rowley/' 
and " Thomas Dickers " were not usually 
treated with such a show of respect. The 
greater men came out of this thraldom, 
Jonson to the post of laureate and enter- 
tainer of the Court, Chapman to fame as 
the great translator of Homer. It is not to 
be wondered that Drayton, when the pa- 
tronage of "great ones'' and his talents as a 
poet had raised him to repute, tried to cover 
up the disgraceful time of his bondage to 
Henslowe and refrained from avowing the 
authorship of any work written under such 
blighting conditions. As to the lesser men, 
many of them died, as they had lived, with 
the clutch of Henslowe and poverty at their 
throats. 



VIII 

WHEN MUSIC AND SWEET 
POETRY AGREE 



*73 




VIII 

When Music and Sweet 
Poetry agree 

If Music and sweet Poetry agree, 
As they must needs, the Sister and the Brother, 
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, 
Because thou lov'st the one and I the other. 
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch 
Upon the Lute doth ravish human sense ; 
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such, 
As passing all conceit, needs no defence. 
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound, 
That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes ; 
And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned, 
Whenas himself to singing he betakes. 
One god is god of both, as poets feign ; 
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain. 



It 



174 When Music and 

It was thus that one of the most tuneful 
of Elizabethan lyrists, Richard Barn- 
field, addressed a bosom friend. Nor 
can we wonder, considering Shakespeare's 
love of the sister art of music and the ex- 
cellence of this sonnet, that it has passed 
current, until lately, as the work of the 
master dramatist himself. Shakespeare's age 
was nothing if not musical. No gentleman's 
or lady's education was complete without a 
knowledge of plain-song and a competent 
skill on cittern or lute, on the recorder or 
the " viol de gamboys," all of them popu- 
lar musical instruments of the day. To be 
unable to bear a part in singing at sight or 
to " descant," as it was called, on a simple 
melody, was to imperil the genuineness of 
a man's gentility ; and not to know Byrd, 
Morley, or Campion, the composers, and 
Dowland, the famous lutenist, was to be- 
tray oneself uncultured indeed. Even among 
the middle and lower classes, the carter had 

his 



Sweet Poetry agree 175 

his catches, the tinker his rounds ; the very 
beggars sang ballads in the streets and so 
proverbially expert were the weavers in 
sweet singing that " to draw a soul out of 
a weaver " was to sing beyond criticism and 
comparison. There was music at the thea- 
tres, at Court, and at home ; music out-doors 
and in church. The dawn was ushered 
in with " hunts-ups " and " aubades," and 
the night rendered melodious with "seras" 
and serenades. There were ballads for daily 
singing, carols for Christmas, " dumps " for 
despondency, and merry burdens for May- 
day. Foundlings were trained in the art of 
song that from their musical abilities they 
might the more readily procure places as 
servants. A fool with "a good breast," as a 
fine voice was then called, might demand 
a noble for his patron. Royalty set this 
musical example. Aside from the singing 
children of her chapel and the occasional 
musicians that figured at court entertain- 
ments 



176 When Music and 

ments and plays, " Elizabeth was accus- 
tomed," we are told, "to be regaled dur- 
ing dinner with twelve trumpets and two 
kettle-drums ; which together with fifes, 
cornets and side drums, made the hall ring 
for half an hour together.'' Nor was "the 
Queenes noise," as the quaint phrase went, 
always equally robust. Elizabeth loved 
song and was herself "well seene " in the 
virginals, an instrument, through spinet and 
harpsichord, to develop into the modern 
pianoforte. The Queen's father before her 
had written songs and sung in his own 
glees. 

Modern musicians sometimes set beauti- 
ful lyrics to music ; but for the most part 
we esteem any stuff good enough to sing. 
Such was not the Elizabethan feeling; and 
it was conceived not only that a poem might 
be clothed in a fitting or unfitting raiment 
of song, but that a lovely air deserved to 
carry fair freight on its clear and liquid 

stream : 



Sweet Poetry agree 177 

stream ; for, to vary the figure, it was a 
conviction that out of the wedded arts a 
completer beauty might arise. The lyric, 
when all has been said, is cousin-german 
to vocal song, and many an Elizabethan 
lyrist thought doubtless as he wrote that 
his poetry would be sung as well as read. 
" These poems," prints old Gascoigne in 
a marginal note to his Posies, "have verie 
sweete notes adapted unto them, the which 
I would you should also enjoy as well as 
myself.' ' But the Elizabethan stopped not 
at lyrics, but set other forms of poetry to 
music. Thus Robert Southwell, the Jesuit 
father, proposed that his fervid, if ingen- 
iously " conceited,' , poetry should be sung; 
and so late as 1622 John Hanay, a very 
small and obscure poetling, furnished music 
for the first stanza of his poem Philomela, 
with the evident and unabashed intent that 
the remaining ninety and nine stanzas be 
sung, all to the same tune. Nor was this so 

very 



i7 8 When Music and 

very eccentric ; narrative poems of consider- 
able length must have been popularly sung 
far into literary times. Sir Philip Sidney 
writes in his Defence of Poesie : " I never 
heard the old song of Percy and Douglas 
[Chevy Chase], that I found not my heart 
moved more than with a trumpet; and 
yet it is sung by some blind crowder, 
with no rougher voice than rude style." 
And the rhetorical courtier, Puttenham, 
declares : " The over busy and too speedy 
return of one manner of tune doth too 
much annoy and, as it were, glut the ear, 
unless it be small and popular musics sung 
by those Cantabanqui upon benches and 
barrel heads, where they have none other 
audience than boys and country fellows 
that pass by them in the street; or else 
by blind harpers, or such like tavern min- 
strels that give a fit of mirth for a groat ; 
and their matter being for the most part 
stories of old time, as the 'Tale of Sir 

Thopas, 



Sweet Poetry agree 179 



Thopas, Bevis of Southampton, Guy of War- 
wick, Adam Bell, and Clym of the C/ough, 
and such other old romances or historical 
rimes, made purposely for the amuse- 
ment of the common people at Christmas 
dinners, and bride-ales, and in taverns and 
alehouses, and such other places of base 
resort." 

The modern practitioner in music who 
makes his living by the practical teaching 
of his art and professes — perhaps knows 
— nothing of the science of counterpoint, 
must have been entirely unknown to the 
age of Elizabeth. Or, if known, he was 
probably regarded in the category with 
fencing and dancing masters. Indeed the 
piper, fiddler, or other common musician 
was held in great contempt. Mercutio 
meets Tybalt's taunt, "Thou consort'st 
with Romeo," with the rejoinder : " Con- 
sort ! What, dost thou make us minstrels ? 
And thou make minstrels of us, look for 

nothing 



i8o 



When Music and 



nothing but discords : here 's my fiddle- 
stick ; here 's that shall make you dance. 
Zounds, consort ! " And Prince Hal is re- 
lated to have once broken FalstarPs head 
for likening his father, the King, to " a 
singing-man of Windsor." On the other 
hand famous performers on the lute and 
other instruments there were, and some of 
these were held in high repute. Some of 
them even travelled abroad to foreign 
courts to exhibit their English skill. Apart 
from mere " cantabanqui ,: and minstrels, 
the Elizabethan musician was a man of re- 
finement and learning, versed in ancient 
lore as well as modern art, and claiming, 
like the Elizabethan poet, the University as 
his nesting-place. 

The popularity of song-books in this 
era was extraordinary and unexampled, ex- 
tending, should a list be made, to some 
seventy titles between the date of the Ar- 
mada and that of the death of Shakespeare. 

There 



Sweet Poetry agree 181 

There were fashions in poetry as well as in 
the costume of the time, and both were 
quick to rise and quick to fall. In the 
eighties poetry was "all for pastorals/' and 
"that smooth song, ' Come live with me 
and be my love/ which was made by Kit 
Marlowe/' is the measure at once of a quaint 
taste and a perfect achievement in its dainty 
kind. In the nineties came the sonneteers 
with their sugared similitudes, a cult of 
Petrarch, beauty and " conceit ; " artificial 
and repetitious for the most part, yet reach- 
ing real passion in Sidney, supreme beauty in 
Spenser, and sounding depths beyond mere 
passing fashion, if not beyond all other 
lyrical poetry, in the superlative sonnets of 
Shakespeare. With the waning of the popu- 
larity of the sonnet, the writing of words 
intended to be set to music succeeded as 
the lyrical vogue in England, and was long 
to continue so. 

" I endeavored to get into my hands all 

such 



1 82 When Music and 

such English songs as were praiseworthy, 
and amongst others I had the happiness to 
find in the hands of some of my friends 
certain Italian madrigals translated most 
of them five year ago by a gentleman for 
his private delight." Thus writes Nicholas 
Yong, a London merchant in 1588, an 
enthusiastic collector of " songs in part," 
whose house was musical with their fre- 
quent performance, and who employed his 
correspondents in Italy to seek out and send 
him the compositions of Marenzio, Con- 
verso, and other Italian writers of vocal 
music. 

The Elizabethan song-book supplied 
both music and words, and was often so 
printed that three or four singers might sit 
on opposite sides of a small table, placing 
the book open before them, and sing each 
from his own part, all printed on the same 
page. The secular song-book was made up 
usually of madrigals or of "ayres." An ayre 

was 



Sweet Poetry agree 



183 



was a simple musical composition for one 
voice or more accompanied by instruments ; 
a madrigal was a far more complicated 
affair. Not only was the madrigal written 
for voices alone, but it was contrapuntal, 
that is, based on an elaborate system of 
themes and counter-themes interwoven and 
entwined, of which the suites of Scarlotti 
and Palestrina and the fugues of John 
Sebastian Bach are later examples. It was 
thus that Thomas Morley commented on 
the structure of the madrigal : " As for 
the music, it is, next unto the motet, the 
most artificial and to men of understand- 
ing the most delightful. If therefore you 
will compose in this kind you must possess 
yourself with an amorous humor, (for in 
no composition shall you prove admirable 
except you put on and possess yourself 
wholly with that vein wherein you com- 
pose) so that you must in your music be 
wavering like the wind, sometimes wanton, 

sometimes 



i8 + 



When Music and 



sometimes drooping, sometime grave and 
staid, otherwhile effeminate ; you may retain 
points and revert them, use tri-plays and 
show the uttermost of your variety, and the 
more variety you show the better shall you 
please." 

But if the music of the madrigal was 
elaborate, the words were simplicity itself. 
A tiny gem of verse is the madrigal, con- 
veying one thought directly and daintily 
expressed in a succession of equal sentences. 
Its very words are in the nature of song. 

Faustina hath the fairer face, 
And Phyllida the feater grace ; 

Both have mine eye enriched : 
This sings full sweetly with her voice ; 
Her fingers make as sweet a noise : 

Both have mine ear bewitched. 
Ah me ! sith Fates have so provided, 
My heart, alas, must be divided. 

At times the madrigal contains much of 
the essence of the epigram, as in Michael 

Drayton's 



Sweet Poetry agree 1 85 

Drayton's lines addressed to Morley, the 
celebrated composer mentioned above : 

Such was old Orpheus' cunning, 

That senseless things drew near him, 

And herds of beasts to hear him. 
The stock, the stone, the ox, the ass, came running. 

Morley, but this enchanting 

To thee, to be the music god, is wanting ; 
And yet thou needst not fear him ; 

Draw thou the shepherds still, and bonny lasses, 

And envy him not stocks, stones, oxen, asses. 

But it is not to be supposed that the free 
Elizabethan Muse was long to be confined 
in such gossamer trammels as these. Sidney 
had already written the lines, " My true 
love hath my heart," so charming in their 
simplicity, and in Shakespeare's " Take, 
O take, those lips away," and " Full fathom 
five my father lies," we have more exqui- 
site words for the madrigal (albeit freer in 
form) than all the Italian poets could con- 
trive among them. 

The ayre afforded a freer and happier 

union 



1 86 When Music and 

union of the arts than did the madrigal 
with its contrapuntal music and its brief 
range of words and ideas. The Elizabethan 
ayre set to the successive stanzas of a fine 
lyric must be regarded as the highest tri- 
umph of combined musical and poetic art. 
And lovely as the enchanting words of the 
best lyrics are — those in the song-books 
of Campion, Jones, Morley, Hume, Wil- 
son, and many more — they were not un- 
worthily set. Some of the music has been 
preserved by Chappell and others. It seems 
to us quaint and old-fashioned, for music 
changes more rapidly than poetry, and is 
more conventional in its temporary modes 
and passing mannerisms. And yet there is 
often a pleasing cadence about these old 
tunes, which, taken all in all, do not seem 
more old-fashioned than the ruffs, the 
farthingales, and the falling bands which 
characterized the costumes of our English 
forefathers. 

These 



Sweet Poetry agree 187 

These old musicians must have been 
an interesting class, with their University 
breeding, their practice of the learned and 
intricate counterpoint of the day, and their 
foreign and courtly associations. William 
Byrd, the Queen's instructor on the virgi- 
nals, held for some years a monopoly of 
the music published, out of which he seems 
to have made less than Raleigh contrived to 
obtain out of his monopoly of sweet wines. 
Thomas Morley of the Chapel Royal, a 
prolific writer of secular music, as seven or 
eight books of his attest, is ever memor- 
able as one of the earliest composers of 
music to Shakespeare's perfect songs. It 
was Morley, we are told, who set " It was 
a lover and his lass" to a tune which has a 
lilt and a freshness which time has been 
little able to impair. A third musician of 
great repute in his day as a lutenist was 
John Dowland, immortalized in the sonnet, 
" In praise of Music and sweet Poetry, " 

already 



1 88 When Music and 

already quoted above. There may be seen 
the estimation in which music was held in 
the comparison of Dowland's repute to that 
of Spenser in poetry. Dowland was one of 
those that carried the fame of English mu- 
sicians to the continent. He was lutenist at 
various times to the Landgrave of Hesse, to 
the King of Denmark, and to other noble 
and royal patrons. It is interesting to find 
the Landgrave addressing Dowland in terms 
of respectful consideration, denoting a re- 
cognition of that equality with princes 
which the mastery of a fine art can at times 
confer. Dowland appears to have been a 
victim of what we now call " the artistic 
temperament," through which he became 
an object of deep sympathy and concern to 
himself and a sore trial, doubtless, to all 
his friends. 

A difference of opinion has arisen as to 
whether the composers of madrigals and 
ayres were usually the authors of the words 

of 



Sweet Poetry agree 189 

of their songs or not. Mr. Bullen, a pio- 
neer in the recognition and collection of 
the lyrics of Elizabeth's age, is of opinion 
that " the composers are responsible only 
for the music. " Whereas Mr. Davey, the 
author of an excellent history of music, 
says : " It appears to me that as a rule the 
tunes and the poetry were simultaneously 
conceived. I ground this belief on the de- 
tailed parallelism in the metre of the suc- 
cessive stanzas in the ayres through which 
the same music affects them all." There 
seems something in this ; although another 
argument might be found in the uniform- 
ity of the poetical style which often ac- 
companies the musical works of the same 
composer. In the works of the greatest 
man of this class, Thomas Campion, we 
are certain that the two arts were fittingly 
and indissolubly wedded. As to the lesser 
lights, it matters very little, though I should 
like to be sure that Robert Jones and Cap- 
tain 



i9° When Music and 

tain Tobias Hume are the delightful poets 
which the words to the songs in their books 
would indicate if they wrote them. Mr. 
Bullen has picked out the following perfect 
stanza to form the text for one of his vol- 
umes of lyrics : 

Love ! they wrong thee much 
That say thy sweet is bitter, 
When thy rich fruit is such 
As nothing can be sweeter. 
Fair house of joy and bliss, 
Where truest pleasure is, 

I do adore thee : 

1 know thee what thou art, 
I serve thee with my heart 

And fall before thee. 

Alas that a man who could write like this 
should remain forever a flitted shade and 
mere simulacrum of departed glory. Could 
Captain Tobias Hume have wielded his 
sword as his pen he could scarcely have 
left the world a more consummate swords- 
man. Quite as perfect for the music of 

their 



Sweet Poetry agree 1 9 I 

their words are such lines as these, half 
whimsical, half daintily serious : 

How many new years have grown old 
Since first thy servant old was new ! 
How many long hours have I told 
Since first my love was vowed to you ! 
And yet, alas ! she doth not know 
Whether her servant love or no. 

This stanza is from one of the songs of 
Robert Jones's Garden of Delight, a book 
now hopelessly lost. Doubtless many a jewel 
choice as this, with much that was weightier 
if less precious, has fallen a prey to " envi- 
ous and calumniating Time." 

When all has been said, we find in 
Thomas Campion the most notable example 
of the poet-musician. As to him, at least, 
there can be no doubt, for he writes con- 
cerning his own song-books : " Some words 
are in these books which have been clothed 
in music by others, and I am content they 
then served their turn : yet give me leave to 

make 



1 92 When Music and 

make use of mine own." In a similar ad- 
dress prefixed to his 'Third Book of Ay res, 
he adds : " In these English ayres I have 
chiefly aimed to couple my words and notes 
lovingly together, which will be much for 
him to do that hath not power over both." 
A member of Gray's Inn in his youth, a 
distinguished practitioner of the sister art 
of medicine in his maturer years, Campion 
was esteemed for his Latin poetry and for 
his English music ; for his critical theories 
wherein he sought to turn English poetry 
back into the well-worn channels of the 
classics ; and for the admirable practice with 
which he confuted these theories in his 
beautiful English lyrical verse. Campion 
was a very accomplished man and held an 
honored place among contemporary musi- 
cians alike for his compositions and for his 
excellent treatise on counterpoint. Although 
a conservative as to prosody, Campion was 
remarkably liberal as to music and wrote 

ayres 



Sweet Poetry agree 193 



ayres in preference to madrigals of set pur- 
pose. He says : " What epigrams are in 
poetry, the same are ayres in music ; then 
in their chief perfection when they are 
short and well seasoned. But to cloy a 
sweet song with a long preludium is to 
corrupt the nature of it." 

The poetry of Campion is saturated with 
Catullus and it shares in the Roman poet's 
sweetness, sensuousness, and mellifluous flow 
of musical words. Campion is not wholly 
a poet of love, although he lavishes on 
Venus's altars his richest and loveliest fruits. 
There is a purity and simple childlike fer- 
vor, a genuine singing quality and happy 
mastery of phrase in the more serious of 
his songs that raise Campion measurably 
above the chorus of amourists and dainty 
gilded sonneteers who rise and fall in a 
singing swarm among the sallows of the 
Elizabethan garden of Love. 

But this pure and natural union of lyr- 
ical 



194 When Music and 

ical poetry and song was not the only unity 
of the arts attempted in this ingenious time. 
True the opera was as yet in embryo in 
far-away Italy, the home of beauty and of 
many perversions thereof. Florentine Peri 
and Caccini, seeking quixotically to resur- 
rect and rejuvenate the dead Muse of Greek 
tragedy, had invented modern opera, " the 
anarchy of the arts " as Schlegel was later 
to call it. Campion might have known 
the authors of Dafne and Euridice, both of 
which were presented in Florence before 
Elizabeth had ceased to reign. Whether 
the English composer knew le nuove mu- 
siche, may be questioned, although his atti- 
tude of preference for the ayre over the 
older scientific music was precisely that of 
the early Italian writers of opera. The 
English masque, too, attempted this union 
of arts, and keeping sound ever subser- 
vient to the sense of sight, with dancing, 
artistic grouping and costuming, combined 

the 



Sweet Poetry agree 195 



the earthly Muse of comedy with the spir- 
itual Muse of song. When Jonson wrote a 
masque for Court he called in the aid of 
Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who devised 
the scenes, decorations, and costumes and, 
with the practical assistance of " the King's 
master carpenter/' contrived the mechani- 
cal devices for change and effect. For the 
music, Jonson resorted to " his excellent 
friend, Alphonso Ferrabosco," the English- 
born son of a celebrated Italian composer 
of Henry the Eighth's Court of the same 
name, whose works, whether in song or in- 
strumental, were of equal repute in his day. 
The music of the masque was of great 
variety, now descriptive with pipe and tabor 
or drum and trumpet ; now arranged in 
"consorts," as the harmony of instruments 
of one kind was called ; now " broken," as 
the mingling of various instruments or in- 
struments with voices was described. It 
would be difficult to conceive of a man 

better 



196 



When Music and 



better fitted than Campion, by nature and 
by study, for the devising of such minglings 
of the arts. Characteristically, as a musi- 
cian, Campion begins the description of 
his Masque at the Marriage of the Lord Hayes 
with an account of the music. The great 
hall, wherein the masque was presented, he 
tells us, " received this division and order. 
The upper part, where the cloth and chair 
of state were placed, had scaffolds and seats 
on either side continued to the screen ; right 
before it was a partition for the dancing- 
place ; on the right hand whereof were con- 
sorted ten musicians, with bass and mean 
lutes, a bandora, a double sackbut, and an 
harpsichord, with two treble violins; on 
the other side somewhat nearer the screen 
were placed nine violins and three lutes, 
and to answer both the consorts (as it were 
in a triangle), six cornets and six chapel 
voices were seated almost right against 
them, in a place raised higher in respect of 

the 



Sweet Poetry agree 



197 



the piercing sound of those instruments ; 
eighteen foot from the screen another stage 
was raised higher by a yard than that which 
was prepared for dancing. This higher 
stage was all enclosed with a double veil, 
so artificially painted, that it seemed as if 
dark clouds had hung before it : within 
that shroud was concealed a green valley, 
with green trees about it, and in the midst 
of them nine golden trees of fifteen foot 
high, with arms and branches very glorious 
to behold." 

In the great variety of songs that followed, 
much was made of the differences in posi- 
tion of the various bands or consorts of 
musicians and in the contrasted qualities, 
combinations and volume of the instruments 
and voices ; and the songs — many of them 
lyrics of great beauty — were variously set 
for solos, answering duets, and choruses, 
accompanied or free. Thus "four Sylvans" 
played on their musical instruments the first 

strain 



i 9 8 



When Music and 



strain of a song by way of prelude, "and 
at the repetition thereof the voices fell in 
with the instruments which were thus di- 
vided : a treble and a bass were placed near 
his Majesty, and another treble and bass 
near the grove, that the words of the song 
might first be heard of all, because the trees 
of gold instantly at the first sound of their 
voices began to move and dance accord- 
ing to the measure of the time which the 
musicians kept in singing, and the nature 
of the words which they delivered." Little 
by little the trees sank out of sight, " a 
matter effected," we are informed, " by an 
engine placed under the stage," and out of 
them emerged the noble dancers ; for be 
it remembered that one of the joys of the 
masque consisted in the circumstance that it 
was not a performance wholly to be looked 
at, but that the noblest lords and the fairest 
ladies were partakers in its dazzling scenes 
and graceful figures, and even royalty in 

the 



Sweet Poetry agree 



99 



the persons of the Queen, Princes and Prin- 
cesses condescended at times to bear a part. 
The climax of this masque Campion thus 
describes: "This chorus was in the manner 
of an echo, seconded by the cornets, then 
by the consort of ten, then by the consort 
of twelve, and by a double chorus of voices 
standing on either side, the one against 
[that is, opposite to] the other, bearing five 
voices apiece, and sometime every chorus 
was heard severally, sometime mixed, but 
in the end all together : which kind of har- 
mony so distinguished by the place [that 
is, position], and by the several nature of 
instruments and changeable conveyance of 
the song, and performed by so many ex- 
cellent masters as were actors in that mu- 
sic, (their number amounting to forty-two 
voices and instruments) could not but yield 
great satisfaction to the hearers." 

In these days of grand opera and of musical 
festivals punctuated with cannon, Campion's 

musical 



200 Music and Poetry 

musical masque seems but a small affair. 
It was successful and amazingly novel for 
its age ; and who shall say that the Eliza- 
bethan's ideal to wed music and lyrical verse, 
environed in scenic beauty and illustrated 
by the poetry of motion, differed so very 
widely from the Wagnerian dream where- 
in that lordly bridegroom, the drama of 
Shakespeare, was to lead to an indissoluble 
marriage before the altar of all the arts, his 
bride the heaven-born music of Beethoven ? 



IX 
THALIA IN OXFORD 




IX 



Thalia in Oxford 



203 



England had adored mummings, pa- 
geants, and interludes for genera- 
tions when Elizabeth came to her 
throne. There had been, time out of mind, 
disguisings and masquings on high days and 
holidays, puppets in booths at fairs, and 
"bride-ales" as the commoner wedding fes- 
tivities were called, theatricals in barns, inn- 
yards, and on London streets. Before the 
reign was half over, if a murder was com- 
mitted, it was staged for a warning. Had a 
continental city been besieged or a foreign 
political criminal fallen, all was arranged for 
the boards before it was stale in the mem- 



ories 



204 



"Thalia in Oxford 



ories of men. But this popular side of the 
drama is far from all. Parallel to the great 
drama which the names of Marlowe and 
Shakespeare adorned and carried home to 
the hearts of common men, ran a scholar's 
and a courtier's drama, earlier and more 
august in its originals, equally tenacious of 
its more conservative ideals, and equally po- 
tent in its influences on contemporary times 
and on times to come. This scholar's and 
courtier's drama claimed the earliest of the 
great English playwrights wholly for its 
own ; and the name which ranks next to 
Shakespeare's was two thirds of its making. 
For Lyly and Jonson were alike purveyors 
of amusement to nobility and royalty. And 
even when, under newer influences, the 
Court drama failed, and the succeeding 
masque, a union of the arts of Thalia, Eu- 
terpe, and Terpsichore, was waning in the 
glare of Puritanism, which unveiled, like 
day, the tawdry unrealities of the stage, 

the 



Thalia in Oxford 



205 



the Universities cherished the old traditions 
and continued to perform primitive trage- 
dies that Sackville might have disdained, 
and comedies the crude classicality of which 
would have moved the seasoned comedians 
of London to derisive laughter. 

Not that there were not notable triumphs 
among the university plays both Latin and 
English. Ezechias, written in English verse 
in the fifties by Nicholas Udall, the au- 
thor of Ralph Roister Doister, the first Eng- 
lish comedy, was so "handled by King's 
College men" that a learned Welsh prelate 
declared it " worthy for a queen to behold." 
Nashe and Harington combined to praise 
the Richardus Tertius of Dr. Legge, who to 
his dramatic honors added the distinction 
of being twice chosen Vice-Chancellor of 
Cambridge. Oxford Bellum Grammaticale 
and Cambridge Pedantius remained for 
years approved and praised as models of 
university comedy, and shared with Igno- 
ramus 



206 "Thalia in Oxford 

ramus (which was even translated into 
English that the vulgar might share in its 
choice university wit) a popularity which 
lasted through a couple of generations. 
The drama had been a passion with the Hu- 
manists, who flourished throughout the Eu- 
rope of Charles the Fifth and the Borgias. 
Ralph RadclifFe, a schoolmaster of Hert- 
fordshire, transformed the refectory of the 
old monastery in which he held his school 
into a veritable theatre, wherein his stu- 
dents acted plays of his composing for the 
strengthening of their memories and the 
betterment of their Latinity. George Bu- 
chanan, grave historian and tutor to Mary 
Queen of Scots and her son, King James, 
wrote Latin plays for his students when a 
teacher in the new college at Boulogne, and 
the young Montaigne is related to have 
acted in them. Whilst excellent John Pals- 
grave (in his zeal for learning) transmuted 
Acolastus, a Latin comedy of a famous 

Dutch 



"Thalia in Oxford 207 



Dutch scholar often performed by school- 
boys, into a text-book from which to learn 
Latin, translating each scene, interpreting 
the characters, the style, and the metres of 
the author as a Latin classic, "not only," he 
said, " for because I esteem that little vol- 
ume to be a very curious and artificial com- 
pacted nosegay, gathered out of the much 
excellent and odoriferous sweet-smelling 
garden of the most pure Latin authors, but 
also because the maker thereof — as far as 
I can learn — is yet living, whereby I would 
be glad to move into the hearts of your 
Grace's clerks some little grain of honest 
and virtuous envy." 

In fine, it had long been the custom of 
the grammar schools, the colleges, and Inns 
of Court to invent devices, to hold revels 
and entertainments, to revive Roman com- 
edies or perform original plays, and to live 
in an atmosphere of invention, rehearsal, 
and persistent theatrical activity. At times 

these 



208 



"Thalia in Oxford 



these attacks of dramatic craze extended 
through protracted periods, and play after 
play was performed, the whole combined 
by means of an elaborate connecting cere- 
monial. Thus in the year 1 594 the students 
of Gray's Inn "betwixt All-Hollantide 
and Christmas " carried on a series of fes- 
tivities before their self-elected " Prince of 
Purpoole " which, although " the rather to 
be preferred by witty inventions than by 
chargeable expenses," must have been as 
sumptuous as they were novel and elaborate. 
What with a "family and followers " of 
upwards of a hundred " nobles and attend- 
ants," each bearing his part, what with the 
coronation, the receptions of " homagers 
and tributaries," proclamations, revels, the 
arguments before the throne on the ex- 
ercise of war or the study of philosophy, 
with other orations, letters " from abroad," 
the replies of his Majesty, the founding of 
royal orders of knighthood, and the per- 
formance 



"Thalia in Oxford 



209 



formance of three complete and difficult 
masques — some conception may be formed 
of the magnitude, elaborated ceremonial, 
and the curious particulars of the Gesta 
Grayorum as the whole function was called. 
The masques were by Beaumont, Chapman, 
and Campion, all recognized poets in their 
day ; and in the final entertainment Queen 
Elizabeth herself was " Prince Purpoole's " 
guest. 

But it is with a somewhat less known 
period of dramatic craze that we are now 
concerned; and with Oxford, not Gray's 
Inn. In an interesting manuscript still pre- 
served in the Library of St. John's College, 
one Griffin Higgs, evidently a student who 
was in the midst of it all, has left us an 
account of a series of festivities, dramatic 
in kind, which starting, so far as the ar- 
rangements were concerned, early in Octo- 
ber, 1607, were continued until Lent put 
a stop to the hilarity. During this period a 

sort 



2IO 



Thalia in Oxford 



sort of theatrical contagion spread from 
gownsmen to the town, and from the 
freshmen, who had a simple farce of their 
own in English, to the Dons, who gravely 
enacted matter didactic in the learned 
tongue. 

The whole thing began at St. John's 
among " the poulderings " or students of 
the second year, who, ascertaining that 
thirty years before similar festivities had 
been held, determined to emulate the past. 
First of all a Christmas Prince was chosen 
who issued under his royal seal, in such 
Latin as the combined learning of " the 
poulderings" could muster, solemn procla- 
mations of various kinds, chiefly concerned 
with the raising of revenue. For the 
Prince's instalment "a schollarlike device 
called Ara Fortune? " was given. The inter- 
locutors were Princeps, Philosophus, Rus- 
ticus, and Stultus and the language was 
evidently Latin. This play was not given 

on 



"Thalia in Oxford 



211 



on a stage but on the tables of the refec- 
tory or dining-hall set closely together. 
The applause was so vociferous at one point 
that it brought down the canopy of For- 
tune ; but, says Higgs, " it was cleanly sup- 
ported by some of the standers by till the 
company was voided. " The play is not 
given in the manuscript, " because of its 
length." 

The next performance was " a private 
shewe in the manner of an interlude con- 
taining the order of Saturnalls, and shew- 
ing the first cause of Christmas candles." 
The characters were Hercules, Curius, and 
Doulus. "This shew," naively remarks our 
student informant, " was very well liked of 
ourselves." Two days later, it being St. 
John's Day, a masque with a morris dance 
was given in the afternoon, and in the even- 
ing a second masque entitled the Twelve 
Days, " the holy-daies speaking Latin and 
the working daies English." The Tragedy 

of 



2i2 "Thalia in Oxford 



of Philomela was booked for December the 
twenty-ninth, but there was much trouble 
in getting it ready and when all was done, 
unhappily, " the Prince himselfe, who was 
to play Tereus, had got such an exceeding 
cold that it was impossible for him to speak, 
or speaking to be heard." "At length it was 
concluded that in case the Prince should 
not hold out, that then the author of the 
tragedy, who was best acquainted with it 
and could say most of the verses, should go 
forward." Fortunately the Prince's voice 
" held out " and the tragedy was a great 
success. " Itys was much wondered at for 
speaking Latin, because he was so little in 
his long coat that he was taken to be a 
child but of seven or eight years old." 

The performance of New Year's Day was 
"a shew called Times Complaint" The piece 
was badly given. The Prologue forgot his 
lines and " Goodwife Spiggott [one of the 
characters] coming forth before her time, 

was 



"Thalia in Oxford 213 

was most miserably at a non plus and made 
others so also, whilst herself stalked in the 
midst like a great Harry lyon as it pleased 
the audience to term it, either saying no- 
thing at all or nothing to the purpose." 
The drunken man too, " who in the repe- 
titions had much pleased and done very 
well, was now so ambitious of his actions 
that he would needes make his part much 
longer than it was, and stood so long upon 
it all that he grew tedious." " Expecta- 
tion," says our young student with a sigh, 
" the devourer of all good endeavours, has 
swallowed more in the very name and title 
of this interlude than was either provided 
or intended in the whole matter. We our- 
selves thought not so ill of it as others, 
neither will future times, we hope, judge 
it so vile as the present did." How wise a 
dispensation it is that authorship and mo- 
therhood are alike blind and dote often- 
times on the least favored of their weans ! 

On 



214 Thalia in Oxford 

On counting the cost of Time s Complaint \ 
our young adventurers discovered to their 
dismay that the exchequer of his Majesty 
was running low. Therefore a proclama- 
tion, egregious alike in its solemnity and 
its Latinity, was promulgated whereby his 
Majesty's liege subjects were adjured to pay 
the charges, and assessed in proportion to 
their dignities, a freshman two shillings, a 
pouldering, four. 

On the tenth of January two private 
" shews " were given in the lodgings of St. 
John's. The first was called S omnium Fun- 
datoris, and concerned matters traditionary 
in the history of the college ; the other was 
a mock play entitled the Seven Days of the 
Week. Besides the Days, the " clarke of St. 
Gyles/' a woman, and a pair of snuffers 
figured amongst the dramatis persona or the 
properties, which shall we say ? This play 
is given in the manuscript and, while but 
a slight piece of fooling, is far from devoid 

of 



'Thalia in Oxford 



2I 5 



of wit. " Enter Sunday Night, cum Luna et 
aliis pertinentiis" reminds us of Bottom's fa- 
mous scratch company where Starveling or 
Snug is advised to " come in with a bush 
of thorns and a lanthorn and say he comes 
to disfigure or to present the person of 
Moonshine.' ' The Seven Days of the Week 
was written for younger boys "who could 
not do serious things. " It went in conse- 
quence so well that it was repeated publicly 
by request a few days later. 

Here his " Highness " was constrained to 
descend to asking the Dons for an extension 
of his rule, and they granted him seven 
more days. On the fifteenth of January a 
Latin play entitled Philomanthes was acted 
with great applause, the audience crying 
again and again, " Abunde satisf actum est ! " 
and giving other signs of encouragement. 
The subsequent performances were a Yule- 
tide Melody of Christmas Sports, whatever 
that may have been, a Vigilate on Candlemas 

Night 



216 "Thalia in Oxford 

Night preceded by a mock proclamation 
and a masque " sudden and extempore," a 
" shew " by the masters and officers " in 
mete and semely Latin phrase," a masque 
of Penelope s Wooers, and lastly, on Shrove 
Tuesday, on a great stage, the masque of 
the Prince's resignation entitled Ira sen Tu- 
mulus Fortuna. " The stage," says our scribe, 
" was never so oppressed with company, in 
so much that it was verily thought that it 
would not be performed that night for want 
of room ; but the audience was so favorable 
as to stand as close and yield as much back 
as was possible," and hence the masque was 
successfully presented. 

Although the Prince had now given up 
his rule, the theatrical spirit was still ram- 
pant at Oxford, and as an English tragedy 
was almost ready, argument arose as to 
whether it should be acted or not. Against 
its presentation it was argued that Lent 
was approaching and enough attention had 

already 



Thalia in Oxford 217 



already been bestowed on performances 
which, when all had been said in their 
favor, were little better than toys. More- 
over it was credibly reported that the in- 
tended play was written in English, " a 
language unfit for the University." After 
protracted and heated argument both objec- 
tions were finally overruled, and Periander 
was given, with a very large cast, by the pick 
of the long-trained actors of St. John's. 
Profiting by their former troublesome ex- 
perience, " the stage was kept void of all 
company." " It is almost incredible," says 
our enthusiastic devotee of Melpomene, " to 
think how well this tragedy was performed 
of all parties." One of the characters was 
called Detraction, and was placed, accord- 
ing to a familiar device of the contempo- 
rary stage, in the audience. He played his 
part so well that " he was like to have been 
beaten for his sauciness." Another actor, 
who played the part of Periander, when 

about 



2l8 



Thalia in Oxford 



about to kill his daughter Eugenia, " did 
not so couch his dagger with his hand but 
that he pricked her through all her attire. 
But, as God would have it," piously adds 
our informant, " it was only a scratch, and 
so it passed/' As only a small part of the 
Oxonians could be accommodated with 
standing room within the hall, several un- 
ruly spirits — rival poulderings, no doubt 
— raised what our friend Higgs called " a 
tumult, without the windows." Where- 
upon " the whifflers made a raid upon them 
with their swords and drove the crowd out 
of the precincts, imprisoning some until 
after the play was over." 

Such was the violence of this attack of 
theatro-mania that we hear of yet other 
productions, by their authors and actors in- 
tended. A Controversy of Irus and his ragged 
company, An Embassy from Lubberland, The 
Creation of the White Knights of the Order of 
Aristotles Well: such were some of the pro- 
jected 



"Thalia in Oxford 219 



jected matters which the patient but wearied 
Dons contrived to consign to the Limbo 
of unfulfilled achievement. Nor were the 
youthful projectors without their troubles. 
Our friend complains that in the repetitions 
as in the performances " some there were 
that stood by and gave aim, willing to see 
much and do little.' 5 And he ends his en- 
tertaining and ingenuous little tract with 
this sound advice : " Let others, hereafter, 
take heed how they attempt the like, unless 
they find better meanes at home and better 
minds abroad.' ' 



X 

A JOURNEY TO THE NORTH 



223 




X 



A Journey to the North 

In the summer of 1618, two years after 
the death of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, 
the greatest living English poet, con- 
ceived the original idea of a journey to 
Scotland on foot and unattended. There 
was much to attract him thither. Scotland 
was the native land of his friend and royal 
patron, King James. Jonson's father and 
grandfather had been of Carlisle, and the 
latter came thither, Jonson had reason to 
believe, from Annandale across the Solway ; 
so that Jonson may well have shared that 
" salmon-like instinct" which the King had 
alleged as a sufficient reason for the royal 

visit 



224 A Journey to the North 



visit to the seat of his northern empire in 
the previous year. Jonson was now in his 
forty-fifth year, and was already showing 
signs of that extreme corpulency which, 
turning scorbutic and dropsical, cost him 
much later his life. This journey to the 
north may have been undertaken on his 
physician's advice as a prolonged and heroic 
constitutional. It was an eccentric and no 
uncourageous thing to attempt in an age in 
which the ways were notoriously bad and 
beset with dangers by no means imaginary. 
And the witticism of Sir Francis Bacon, 
who told Jonson that he " loved not to 
see Poesie goe on other feet than poeticall 
Dactylus and Spondaeus," may well have 
been prompted by a friendly solicitude for 
the safety and well-being of a man whom 
even the worldly and unsympathetic Lord 
Chancellor must have prized for his learn- 
ing and personal worth, if not for the 
lighter graces of his poetry. 

At 



Ben Jonson 



A Journey to the North 225 

At this time Jonson stood alone, the ac- 
knowledged leader among the men of let- 
ters of his day, a successful dramatist, critic, 
translator, lyrist, and writer of occasional 
verse, above all the accepted entertainer, in 
his magnificent masques at Court, of the 
nobility and of royalty itself. Jonson had 
outstood the unpopularity which his uncom- 
promising arrogance had raised against him 
in his earlier plays on the boards of the 
common theatres. He had braved and tri- 
umphed over the attacks of envy and rivalry. 
He had won the patronage, and with it 
the regard and respect, of a larger number 
of "great ones" than any poet before his 
time, and now lived on terms of easy fa- 
miliarity with half the gentry and nobility 
of England. Lastly Jonson had just com- 
pleted a careful gathering in of all his 
works in his folio edition of 1616, the first 
example of a collective edition of an Eng- 
lish poet superintended by himself, and in 

that 



226 A Journey to the North 

that an unexampled attestation of Jonson's 
vogue and repute among his contempora- 
ries. 

Jonson's life had never been that of a 
recluse. He lived in the public eye ; and 
converse with men, the opinion of the ju- 
dicious and the praise of his prince were 
to him as the very breath of his nostrils. 
At Court, where his beautiful and artistic 
masques were recognized as the height of 
the social elegance and poetical spirit of 
their time ; on the boards of the London 
theatres, where the sheer genius of the Al- 
chemist and the Silent Woman had disarmed 
the " mews of opposed rascality/' as well 
as the leers of "envious criticasters ; " in 
the tavern (Elizabethan for the later club or 
coffee-house), where Jonson sat enthroned 
in state, the earliest of that august succession 
of literary autocrats that ruled literary Bo- 
hemia and annexed large provinces of bar- 
barous neighboring Philistia — Jonson was 

alone 



A Journey to the North 227 



alone and unmatched. Hence when the pro- 
ject of his journey was formed it was much 
bruited about, and when at last he shook 
the dust of London from his feet and " the 
Dog, the Sunne, and the Tripple Tun " 
for a time knew him not, it was like the 
departure of a sovereign from the seat of 
his empire. 

Among the familiar figures of the day was 
one John Taylor, a water-man or wherry- 
man, popularly known as "the water poet. ,, 
Taylor was one of the two or three thou- 
sand " poore men " who made their living 
on the river conveying passengers from 
point to point : for the river was often 
safer than the highway. Taylor appears to 
have commenced poet by presenting his 
little doggerel rimes to passengers of note, 
thereby increasing the returns for his ferri- 
age. He was encouraged by the wits, partly 
in sport and out of curiosity to see what he 
might do ; and Jonson sagely reports that 

King 



228 A Journey to the North 

King James on one occasion, adjudging Sir 
Philip Sidney "no poet," declared that he 
had seen no verses in England like to " the 
sculler's : " a remark that may well have 
been true, though hardly in the sense in 
which his Majesty meant it. Be Taylor's 
poetry what it may, this royal opinion was 
the making of the water-man. He was now 
a recognized author and emulous of the 
fame of his rival in literary freakishness, 
Tom Coryat, who had sailed all the way 
to Hamburg in a cock-boat and traversed 
most of the countries of Europe on foot, 
writing up his adventures in his Crudities, 
as he called them, and in other books. 
Hence, whether by accident or design, when 
Jonson set out north, Taylor followed him, 
undertaking what he called the Pennyles 
Pilgrimage or the Money-lesse Perambulation 
of John Taylor, alias the Kings Majesties 
Water-Poet, in which " he travailed on foot 
from London to Edenborugh in Scotland 

not 



A Journey to the North 229 

not carrying any money to or fro, neither 
begging, borrowing or asking meate drinke 
or lodging/' The wits of the town may 
have put Taylor up to his " pilgrimage ; " 
Jonson certainly believed for a time that 
the water-man was "sent hither to scorn 
him.' , But this Taylor denied in his pre- 
face, declaring : " Reader, these travailes of 
mine into Scotland were not undertaken, 
neither in imitation or emulation of any 
man, but onely devised by my selfe on 
purpose to make triall of my friends, both 
in this kingdome of England and that 
of Scotland, and because I would be an 
eye-witnes of things which I had heard of 
that countrey ; and whereas many shallow- 
brain'd critickes doe lay an aspersion on 
me that I was set on by others or that I 
did undergoe this project either in malice 
or mockage of Master Benjamin Jonson, I 
vow by the faith of a Christian that their 
imaginations are all wide, for he is a gentle- 
man 



230 A Journey to the North 

man to whom I am so much obliged for 
many undeserved courtesies that I have re- 
ceived from him and from others by his 
favour, that I durst never be so impudent 
or ingratefull as either to suffer any mans 
perswasions or mine owne instigation to in- 
cite me to make so bad a requitall for so 
much goodness formerly received." 

Jonson appears to have set out, in June, 
and to have taken the eastern route by way 
of York and Newcastle. It is likely that 
he found a warm welcome and fitting en- 
tertainment at many a gentleman's house 
on his way. Jonson's fame was widespread 
over England and his journey had been 
much talked of when in plan. Many would 
welcome the man for his repute who cared 
less for the poet. For the age was hospit- 
able, and all doors were open to the ac- 
credited bearer of news from Court and 
from London. Even in company where he 
was unknown, Jonson's commanding per- 
son, 



A Journey to the North 231 

son, his confident and outspoken opinions, 
and convivial habits, must have won him 
many a friend by the way-side. Jonson 
knew both London and Westminster, and 
could discourse the latest gossip of the thea- 
tre and the tap-room. He could chat with 
the collegian of Oxford or Cambridge, for 
" he was Master of Arts in both Universi- 
ties," albeit " by their favor, not his studie ;" 
nor could the most learned men of the age 
have disdained the friend of Camden, Sel- 
den,and Bacon ; nor the most aristocratically 
exclusive, the accepted companion of the 
literary and amiable D'Aubigny, Duke of 
Lennox. 

We have only one trace of Jonson on 
his way north, and that is at Darlington 
in Durham, where we find him engaged in 
the trivial but necessary matter of the pur- 
chase of a pair of new shoes, in the use of 
which the great poet seems to have suf- 
fered rather more than men of less weight. 

Jonson 



23 2 A Journey to the North 

Jonson may well have appreciated Taylor's 
account of " the last lap " of his long walk. 
" Having but fifteene miles to Edenbor- 
ough, mounted upon my ten toes, [I] be- 
gan first to hobble and after to amble, and 
so being warme, I fell to pace by degrees.' ' 
And Jonson must often, too, have agreed 
with the water-man's impressions, when he 
says: "The Scots doe allow almost as large 
measure of their miles as they doe of their 
drinke ; for an English gallon either of ale 
or wine is but their quart, and one Scottish 
mile, now and then, may well stand for a 
mile and a halfe or two English." 

At what time in the year Jonson arrived 
in Edinburgh it is impossible to say, and we 
can but surmise side jaunts to his ancestral 
Annandale and Carlisle, to Stirling, to Loch 
Lomond and the Highlands. Dominated by 
its queenly castle perched on a rock, the 
Edinburgh of the day was a fine walled town, 
"wherein I observed," writes Taylor, "the 

fairest 



A Journey to the North 233 

fairest and goodliest streete that ever mine 
eyes beheld ; for I did never see or heare of 
a street of that length, which is halfe an 
English mile from the castle to a faire port 
which they call the Neather Bow, and from 
that port, the street which they call the 
Kenny-hate is one quarter of a mile more, 
downe to the Kings Palace, called Holy- 
rood-House, the buildings on each side of 
the way being all of squared stone, five, six, 
and seven stories high and many by-lanes 
and closes on each side of the way, wherein 
are gentlemens houses ; for in the high- 
street the marchants and tradesmen do dwell, 
but the gentlemens mansions and goodliest 
houses are obscurely founded in the afore- 
said lanes : the walles are eight or tenne 
foote thicke, exceeding strong, not built for 
a day, a weeke or a moneth or a yeere, but 
from antiquitie to posterite, for many ages/' 
Edinburgh; indeed, was still the proud 
capital of a separate nation which had given 

her 



234 A Journey to the North 

her richer southern neighbor its King; and 
although the royal promise of a return every 
third year had been commuted, amid the 
cares of state, to a single visit in fourteen 
years, the Scots were too loyal and too inter- 
ested in the larger political issues in which 
they were now sharing, to complain over- 
much. Besides, Edinburgh was not with- 
out its own politics and social life. The 
Scottish Privy Council met in High Street 
twice each week throughout the greater 
part of the year, an august body duly pre- 
serving the picturesque ceremonial of the 
past and composed of forty of the chief 
nobles and commons of Scotland, repre- 
senting in its completeness the flower of 
the realm. The City Council in its neigh- 
boring quarters near the Tolbooth was 
scarcely less august, whilst the Scottish bar, 
like the bench, was already renowned for 
its learning and its gravity, as for its social, 
if not for its convivial graces. Neither 

could 



A Journey to the North 235 



could Henry Charteris, the then principal 
of " the town's college," a man famed 
alike for his scholarship, his piety, and his 
modesty, nor yet Sir William Nisbit, Lord 
Provost of Edinburgh, the owner of a fine 
neighboring estate of Deans, have either of 
them been wanting in the proverbial hearti- 
ness and open-handedness of Scottish hospi- 
tality. 

Taylor had reached Scotland, it appears, 
by quite a different route, passing through 
Preston and Carlisle and stopping first at 
Moffat. Nor did he remain long in the 
capital after visiting Holyrood, the Castle, 
and " the haven and towne of Leeth," but 
passing over to Burntisland, where he met 
many friends, mostly petty officials of King 
James's Court or royal pensioners, he betook 
himself to the Highlands in quest of his 
patrons, the Earl of Mar and Sir William 
Murray of Abercarny. These he finally 
overtook at what he calls the " Brae of 

Marr " 



2 3 6 



A Journey to the North 



Marr " (Braemar) at a great hunting which 
he joined and which he describes con amore, 
returning towards the end of September to 
Edinburgh. Taylor further tells us : " Now 
the day before I came from Edenborough, 
I went to Leeth where I found my long 
approved and assured good friend Master 
Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stu- 
arts house : I thanke him for his great kind- 
nesse towards me : for at my taking leave 
of him, he gave me a piece of gold of two 
and twenty shillings to drink his health in 
England. And withall, willed me to re- 
member his kind commendations to all his 
friends. So with a friendly farewell, I left 
him as well, as I hope never to see him in 
a worse estate : for he is amongst noblemen 
and gentlemen that knowe his true worth 
and their owne honours, where with much 
respective love he is worthily entertained." 
The late Professor Masson identified the 
Master John Stuart of this passage with a 

substantial 



A Journey to the North 



237 



substantial householder, "incumbent of the 
office of Water-Bailie of Leith and owning 
a ship called the Post of Leith of which one 
hears as employed some times in the govern- 
ment service." How Jonson came to know 
him, it is impossible to surmise. The poet 
must have been comfortably lodged with 
Master Stuart, within easy walk of town, for 
Leith Walk was but a mile in length, and 
although the precise particulars of his stay 
in the northern capital are beyond recovery 
we may feel assured that in the water poet's 
words, " for he is amongst noblemen and 
gentlemen that knowe his worth/' we have 
no idle compliment but a simple statement 
of the fact. Happily in this we are not left 
wholly to surmise. For in the register of the 
Edinburgh Town Council, September 25, 
161 8, and therefore much about the time 
of Taylor's farewell visit, it appears that the 
Provost, Bailies, Dean of the Guild, and 
Council "being conveynitt," the following 

order 



\ 



2 3 8 A Journey to the North 

order was passed : " Ordanis the Deyne of 
Gild to mak Benjamyn Jonsoun, Inglisman, 
burges and gild-brother in communi forma!' 
Now we are informed that " the common 
form of admission in the case of ordinary 
burgesses was that the applicant, armed in 
some regulated manner with a corselet, a 
hagbut, or the like, appeared before the 
Dean of Guild and his colleagues of the 
Guild Chamber, took the customary oath, 
and paid a larger or smaller sum for his free- 
dom according to the kind and the degree 
of the trading privileges to which it entitled 
him." But it is plain that Ben Jonson was 
not seeking trading rights in the city of 
Edinburgh, and the subsequent entries of 
the register make patent that this was an 
honorary admission to the rights and privi- 
leges of citizenship, a favor bestowed only 
on men of acknowledged rank or promi- 
nence and such alone as the city delighted 
to honor. A later entry grants ^13 6s. 8d. 

to 



A Journey to the North 239 



to " Alexander Pattersone for wrytting and 
gilting of Benjamine Johnestounes burges 
ticket, being thryis writtin." The Council 
was apparently not easily satisfied with Pat- 
tersone's calligraphy, and wished the Eng- 
lish poet to take back with him a becoming 
memorial of their esteem and the honor of 
their bestowal. Nor was this all; a later min- 
ute of the Council orders " the Thesaurer 
to pay to James Ainslie, laite baillie, twa 
hundreth twenty-ane pound, sex schillingis, 
four pennyis, debursit be him upone the den- 
ner maid to Benjamin Jonstoun, conforme 
to the act maid thairanent and compt given 
in of the same." No mean sum for a ban- 
quet was ^221 6s. 4d., even when computed 
in debased Scottish coinage. Dear to the 
heart of convivial Jonson must have been 
this public honoring of the Muses in his 
person in the city sometime to be called the 
Athens of the North ; and we may let our 
imaginations play as we will about this 

memorable 



2 4° A Journey to the North 

memorable feast in which Sir William Nis- 
bit, the Lord Provost, in the chair surrounded 
by noblemen, scholars, chosen citizens, and 
gentlemen of Scotland, sought worthily to 
honor the greatest living poet of England. 
Depend upon it, the tables groaned with 
substantial fare and curious delicacies which 
even the Nodes Ambrosiance of later days 
were not to surpass ; nor could these north- 
ern potations have been measured in terms 
of the Mermaid, or even in the more tem- 
perate draughts of the Apollo Room of the 
Devil Tavern, Jonson's later favorite Lon- 
don haunt. Though Ben Jonson might hold 
his own in this as in all else, we may feel 
sure that his hosts, remembering the occa- 
sion, might have addressed their guest in 
Herrick's hearty words : 

For we such clusters had 
As made us nobly wild, not mad, 

And yet each verse of thine 
Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine. 

From 



A Journey to the North 241 

From a literary point of view, however, 
by far the most interesting man of Jonson's 
meeting in Edinburgh was William Drum- 
mond, Laird of Hawthornden, a poet of no 
mean worth and a man of exemplary and 
unaffected life. Thanks to his father's post 
of gentleman usher to King James, young 
Drummond, in his transit from the Univer- 
sity of Edinburgh to the schools of Paris and 
Bourges, had caught a glimpse of the Eng- 
lish Court in 1606. He had stayed in Lon- 
don long enough to purchase and to read — 
we may believe with zest and profit to his 
taste — some of the popular English books 
of the time. For a contemporary list of his 
reading contains Sidney's Arcadia, Lyly's 
Euphues, poems of Drayton and other popu- 
lar living poets, and, above all, Loves La- 
bour 's Lost, A Midsummer Nig /it's Dream, 
Romeo and "Juliet, Lucrece, and The Passion- 
ate Pilgrim, Drummond indeed was a very 
cultivated man and added to the classical 

training 



24 2 A Journey to the North 

training befitting a gentleman of his station, 
an acquaintance with French, Spanish, and 
Italian authors, which travel, at least as far 
as France, and reading had rendered consid- 
erable. Although deeply interested in the 
course of political affairs in his own and in 
his foster country of England, and touching 
at times the skirts of public life, Drummond 
had nothing in common with the adventur- 
ous horde of his fellow countrymen, which, 
some dozen years before he had come into 
his estate, had pressed southwards after their 
King, intent to wrest their fortunes from 
opulent England, and frequently offering no 
better claim to the royal recognition than 
the accident of their Scottish birth and their 
unquestionable needs. Nor did Drummond 
take an active part in the later turmoils that 
hurried the nation to civil war and regicide, 
though he was ever bold in the expression 
of his loyalty to his King, and is reported 
by some to have died of the shock received 

in 



William Drummond 



A Journey to the North 243 

in the news of King Charles's execution. 
To the reserved and delicate temper of Wil- 
liam Drummond, touched as he was with a 
mellowing streak of the Epicurean, the inde- 
pendence and seclusion of his paternal Haw- 
thornden, its groves of oaks and beeches, its 
rocky glens, "silvery Esk gliding between/' 
were things beyond the price of rubies. And 
he doubtless envied very little his friend, Sir 
William Alexander of Menstrie, a poet like 
himself, but one who had exchanged the 
reminiscent making of Senecan Monarchic 
Tragedies, as he called them, for an active 
life at the brilliant, frivolous, and vexatious 
English Court, to the end that he might 
write himself the Earl of Stirling. 

Hawthornden House is still one of the 
sights of the tourist to Edinburgh, who may 
now go part way by train. He will recall 
the depleted and polluted Esk, with much, 
however, that is still picturesque and de- 
lightful. Hawthornden is a fine old house, 

hung 



244 A Journey to the North 

hung on the edge of a cliff, half stronghold, 
half commodious Jacobean dwelling. Above 
are many and diamond-paned turret win- 
dows, looking across the tree-tops to where 
the stream, far below, swerves around a bend 
to Polton. Beneath the house, cut in the 
primitive red sandstone, are underground 
chambers in which tradition affirms that 
Robert Bruce once hid from the pursuing 
soldiers of King Edward ; but which were 
originally as likely as not the far earlier 
stronghold of marauding Pictish chiefs. It 
was to this pleasant seat, surrounded with 
gardens, then as now, that Drummond wel- 
comed Jonson and there he hospitably enter- 
tained him for many days. 

The two poets must have offered a strik- 
ing contrast as they sat together under the 
great sycamore tree that is still pointed out 
to the credulous visitor. Jonson was a man 
of great stature and exceeding bulk, with a 
harsh-featured face, pitted with small-pox, a 

stubble 



A Journey to the North 245 

stubble beard, a tousled head, and careless 
in his dress. Drummond, twelve years his 
junior, was of delicate build and feature, of 
somewhat precise manners, and, if we may 
believe a contemporary miniature, rather 
dainty in his attire, and fastidious even to 
the curl and the trimming of his beard. 
But Jonson, despite the misrepresentation 
of three centuries, was no boor. Nor was 
Drummond a fop. For twenty years the 
English dramatist had known every man in 
England worth knowing. He had conversed 
with princes and received with self-respect 
the patronage of lords and ladies. But he 
had also served as a pikeman in his young 
manhood, trod the stage as an unsuccessful 
actor, and experienced the horrors of an 
Elizabethan felon's cell. Drummond's life 
had been far less eventful. He had lost the 
bride of his youthful choice before their 
marriage day and was still a bachelor, cher- 
ishing the past with a sincere, if somewhat 

sentimental, 



246 A Journey to the North 

sentimental, regret. Jonson, who reported 
his late wife " a shrew, but honest," was 
now a widower. The years had taken from 
him, also, a son and a daughter and touched 
his rugged nature with Death's irreparable 
stroke. But Jonson was no sentimentalist 
and deprecated any unmanly show of feel- 
ing as much as he deified the Jonsonian trin- 
ity, Wit, Learning, and Honesty or Moral 
Worth. 

Nor were the literary ideals of the two 
poets less at variance than their personalities 
and their experience in life. Jonson's learn- 
ing was almost wholly classical. Drummond 
even affirmed that all the Englishman's criti- 
cisms " of stranger poets " were " to no pur- 
pose, for he neither doeth understand French 
nor Italiannes." Be this as it may, Jonson 
certainly had less sympathy and apprecia- 
tion for the glories of Italian literature, for 
Petrarch, Tasso, or Ariosto, than almost any 
Elizabethan writer of note. The Scottish 

poet, 



A Journey to the North 247 

poet, on the contrary, was saturated with the 
poetry of Italy, and in his love of that sweet 
sensuousness and in his adoration of sym- 
metry and convention in form, practised the 
sonnet, the canzon, and the madrigal — 
those exquisite yet artificial flowers of the 
Italian Renaissance — in a manner which 
Sir Philip Sidney had hallowed to the Eng- 
land of a generation before. 

Jonson's visit was the great event of Drum- 
mond's life. Nor was it a trifle to hold the 
greatest of living English poets in familiar 
colloquy by the fireside. Drummond was 
full of question and Jonson answered with 
candor and the large overstatement of inti- 
mate discourse. Happily for us, Drummond 
regarded the occasion as so memorable that 
he reduced to writing many of the remarks, 
the criticisms of contemporary authors and 
other personages, the anecdotes, and the opin- 
ions of his distinguished guest ; in no wise 
purposing, as has been unjustly and injuri- 
ously 



24 8 A Journey to the North 

ously inferred, to blazon them to the world, 
but that all might inure to an interested pos- 
terity. The Notes of Ben Jonsons Conversa- 
tions with William Drummond is one of the 
most valuable and interesting documents re- 
lating to the great Elizabethan age which 
time has suffered to reach us. In it we have 
the unguarded utterance of a man whose 
critical attainments and unparalleled oppor- 
tunities entitled him to speak as few have 
been privileged to speak. Many of his opin- 
ions, it is true, were hasty, and some were 
prompted by prejudice and personal ani- 
mosity. Thus Daniel, his predecessor as the 
chief poetical entertainer of the Court, was 
" a good honest man, . . . but no poet ; ,J 
the dramatists, Dekker, Middleton, and Day, 
" were all rogues ; ,J " Francis Beaumont 
loved too much himself and his own verses; " 
and " Marston wrote his father-in-lawes 
preachings, and his father-in-law his come- 
dies." But who can doubt that the gleam 

of 



A Journey to the North 249 



of truth flashes out in the words that " Sir 
Walter Raughley esteemed more of fame 
than conscience," that " Salisbury never cared 
for any man longer nor he could make use of 
him," and that the late Queen "never saw 
herself after she became old in a true glass." 
Jonson was a good hater and an honest 
one. Taxed by Inigo Jones, the King's 
architect, with whom he had quarrelled, for 
naming him a fool behind his back, Jonson 
denied it; but declared: "You're ane ar- 
rant knave, and I avouch it." On another 
occasion he declared to Prince Charles 
that " when he wanted words to express the 
greatest villaine in the world, he would call 
him ane Inigo." On the other hand Jon- 
son was equally warm in his praises, getting 
by heart and quoting with delight bits of 
Spenser, Wotton, and other poets, affirming 
that " so he had written The Burning Babe of 
Father Southwell, he would have been con- 
tent to destroy many of his own [poems]," 

and 



2 5° A Journey to the North 

and declaring of Donne that he was " the 
first poet in the world in some things." 
Modesty was not among the cardinal virtues 
of Jonson. Half in jest but half in earnest 
he called himself "The Poet." He hon- 
estly stated it as his conviction that "next 
himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could 
make a masque;" and he maintained with 
warmth " that he was better versed, and 
knew more Greek and Latin than all the 
poets in England, and [even the] quintes- 
sence [of | their braines." 

We must add to all this an equally candid 
and openly expressed opinion of his host, 
in which he told Drummond that he was 
"too good and simple, and that oft a man's 
modestie made a fool of his wits ; " that as 
to Drummond's verses, " they were all good 
. . . save that they smelled too much of the 
schooles, and were not after the fancie of 
the tyme." He even dissuaded Drummond 
from poetry, " for that she had beggared 

him 



A Journey to the North 251 

him when he might have been a rich lawer, 
physitian, or merchant." Can we wonder 
that Drummond summarized Jonson as " a 
great lover and praiser of himself; a con- 
temner and scorner of others ; given rather 
to losse a friend than a jest ; . . . [he] 
thinketh nothing well but what either he 
himself or some of his friends and country- 
men hath said or done ; he is passionately 
kynde and angry ; careless either to gaine 
or keep ; vindictive, but, if he be well an- 
swered, at himself " ? 

And yet the two poets exchanged many 
subsequent greetings of friendship and es- 
teem. One of several extant letters of Drum- 
mond to Jonson contains information con- 
cerning emblems and impressa, as they were 
called, gathered at the solicitation of the 
English poet. Others convey other archaeo- 
logical information. On the other hand, 
Jonson transcribed for Drummond certain 
of his unpublished poems, one of which he 

pompously 



2 5 2 



A Journey to the North 



pompously dedicates " To the honouring 
respect born to the friendship contracted 
with the right virtuous and learned Mr. 
William Drummond, and the perpetuating 
the same by all offices of love hereafter, I, 
Benjamin Johnson, whom he hath honoured 
with the leave to be called his, have with 
mine own hand, to satisfy his request, writ- 
ten this imperfect song." Jonson never saw 
Drummond's written opinion of his charac- 
ter, which be it remembered Drummond 
never sought to publish. Drummond knew 
Jonson's summary of his own. Was Drum- 
mond a traitor to friendship ? Are his Notes 
to be regarded " a tissue of malevolence ? " 
Let him who has never entertained a single 
arriere pensee of his friend be both judge and 
jury, while all others hold in respectful re- 
membrance the Scottish laird, not only for 
his poetry, but for his honest and unideal- 
ized portrait of a veritably great, if superfi- 
cially faulty, man. 



INDEX 



Index 



iii, 
158, 



1 36 
1 68, 



Abbrcarny, 235. 

Acolastus, 206. 

Actors, 105-1 27, ' ,0 » 

140, 145, 1 si, 156, 
Adam Bell, 179. 
Adventurers, 30, 31, 47, 51 53,90, 

91. 
Aery of Children > An, 105-127. 
Africa, 70, 7 1. 
Aimwell, 44. 

Ainslie, (.lines, 239. 
A la hum, So, Hi. 
Alcaics, 98. 

Alcazar, the battle of, 72. 
All he mist, The, 226. 

Alchemy, 52. 
Alencon, Duke of, 5. 

Alexander, Sir William, 243. 

All-Hollantide, 208. 

Allegory, 10, 16. 

Alleyn, Edward, 156,157,160,161. 

AlphonsuS) 140. 

Anjou, I )uke i>f, 88, 101. 

Annandale, 223, 232. 

Antony and Cleopatra, 165. 
Apollo, 22. 

Apollo Room, the, 240. 
At a For tun, r, 2 1 O. 
Arcadia, 1 00, 24 1 . 
Areopagus, the, 95-97. 



A lion, 20, 21. 
Ariosto, 246. 
Aristotle, 100. 
Armaila, 180. 

Arraignment of Paris, The, 120. 

Arras, ?f>. 

Ascham, Roger, 152. 

Asclepiads, 98. 

Astrophel and Stella, 100. 

Ale, 120. 

Aubades, 175. 

Ayrcs, 182, 183, 1K6, 188, 189, 
192, 193. 

Bacchus, 16. 

Bach, [83. 

Bacon, Sir Francis, 30, 97, 224, 231. 
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, -\. 
Baiting, 1 f>, 1 07, 1 56. 
Ballads, 72, 175, 178, 179. 
Bandora, the, 196, 
Banquel al ECenilworth, 20. 
Barbycan Street, 32. 
Bai afield, Rii hard, 1 74. 
Barns as theatres, 203. 
Beauchamp Chapel, 77. 
Beaumont, Francis, 82,122,156,209, 
248. 

Beer, 39. 
Beethoven, 200. 

55 



Index 



Be Hum Grammatical, 205. 

Bevis of Southampton, 179. 

Blackfriars, 114. 

Borgias, the, 206. 

Bottom, 215. 

Boulogne, 206. 

Bourges, 241. 

Braemar, 236. 

Breast, a good, 175. 

Breton, Elizabeth, 32, 38-45. 

Breton, Nicholas, 32. 

Breton, William, 29-47. 

Bride-ales, 17-19, 179, 203. 

Bruce, Robert, 244. 

Bruno, Giordano, 79. 

Buccaneering, 47, 52, 60-63. 

Buchanan, George, 206. 

Bullen, A. H., 189, 190. 

Burdens, May-day, 175. 

Burgh, 33. 

Burghley, Lord, 4, 72. 

Burning Babe, The, 249. 

Burntisland, 235. 

Byrd, William, 174, 187. 

Caccini, 194. 
Cadiz, 70. 
Caslica, 8 1 . 
Caesar, Julius, 165. 
Calatrava, the order of, 66. 
Cambridge, 6, 11, 94, 108, 

132, 205, 231. 
Camden, William, 4, 231. 
Camena, 8 1 . 
Campion, Thomas, 174, 186, 

191—200, 209. 
Cardinal Wolsey, 169. 
Carew, Sir Peter, 62. 



109 



89 



Carlisle, 223, 232, 235. 

Carlo w, 67. 

Carols, 175. 

Castle, Edinburgh, 235. 

Catherlough, 70 

Catullus, 193. 

Cayas, 66. 

Cecil, Robert, 4, 61, 64, 70, 84, 249. 

Ceres, 16. 

Chaloner, Sir Thomas, 61. 

Champion, the royal, 87. 

Chapel, her Majesty's, 7, 108-110, 
113, 114, 116, 187. 

Chapel children, the, 113. 

Chapman, George, 122, 168, 170, 
209. 

Chappell, W., 186. 

Charles I, 78, 242, 243. 

Charles II, 127. 

Charles V, 55, 206. 

Charles, Prince, 249. 

Charteris, Henry, 235. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 93. 

Chettle, Henry, 158, 168, 170. 

Chevy Chase, 178. 

Children actors, 105—127. 

Chimneys, 35. 

Chivalry, 87-90. 

Choir-boys, 108, 109. 

Choir-master, the, 109, 113, 114. 
, Christian IV, 188. 

Christmas, 175, 179, 208, 210-212, 
215, 216. 

Cibber, Colley, 127. 
, Cittern, the, 174. 

City, 39, 40, 42, 45-47, 52, 53. 

City Council of Edinburgh, 234, 237. 

Civita Vecchia, 70. 
256 



Index 



Classic influence, 97, 98, 100, 246. 

Clifton, Thomas, 115. 

Clym of the Clough, 179. 

Cock-fighting, 107. 

College of God's Gift, 157. 

Colleges, 207. 

Come live with me and be my love, 181. 

Comedy, 195, 205. 

Commissioners, French, 88. 

Conceit, 101, 181. 

Consorts, 195, 199. 

Contrapuntal composition, 179, 183, 

186, 187, 192. 
Controversy of Irus, A, 218. 
Converso, 182. 
Cork, 62. 

Cornets, 176, 196, 199. 
Coryat, Thomas, 228. 
Costume, 8,88, 89, no, in, 158, 

169, 181, 186, 194, 195. 
Court, 5, 7-9, n, 91, 92, 108, 

204, 230. 
Coventry, 19. 
Cox, Captain, 20. 
Creation of the White Knights of the 

Order of Ar is to ties Well, The, 218. 
Criticism, 225. 
Crudities, 228. 
Curtis, Sir Thomas, 59. 
Cynthia, 120. 
Cynthia* s Revels, 118, 120, 124. 

Daborne, Robert, 160, 161. 

Dafne, 194. 

Dancing, 194, 196, 197-200, 204, 

211. 
Dancing-masters, 179. 
Danes, overthrow of the, 19. 



Daniel, Samuel, 248. 

Darlington, 231. 

Davenant, Sir William, 78. 

Davey, H., 189. 

Day, John, 248. 

Days, the, as characters, 214. 

Dee, Dr., 52. 

Defence of Poesie, 100, 178. 

Dekker, Thomas, 1 51-154, 159, 
168, 170, 248. 

Denmark, 140, 188. 

Descanting, 174. 

Detraction, 217. 

Devil Tavern, 240. 

Diana, 22, 23. 

Diary, Hens lowers, 156-170. 

Diary of a Resident of London, 41. 

Discovery, 90, 91. 

Dog Tavern, the, 227. 

Donne, John, 250. 

Douglas, 178. 

Dowgate, 131. 

Dowland, John, 173, 174, 187, 188. 

Drake, Sir Francis, 47, 63, 91. 

Drama, Elizabeth and the, 10; adven- 
ture commemorated in the, 52, 53; 
on Stucley's life, 59, 60, 72; of 
Greville, 80-82; children players 
in the, 105-127; of Spenser's boy- 
hood, 107, 108; the courtly and 
academic, 108, 109, 203-219; 
the Revels, 109; Field's attacks on 
the, 117; ofjonson, 1 17, 1 18, 226; 
satirical and allegorical, 117, 118, 
120; of Marlowe and Shakespeare, 
120, 121; realistic, 122, 123; 
playwrights often actors, 136; Eng- 
lish, abroad, 140; of Greene, 140, 

57 



Index 



141 ; of Shakespeare, 141, 142; 
Henslowe and the, 154-170; pro- 
duction of new plays, 162, 163; 
payment for plays, 168. See also 
Actors, Masques, Playwrights, and 
the various dramatic authors. 

Drayton, Michael, 167, 169, 170, 
184, 185, 241. 

Dress, 8, 88, 89, no, in, 158, 
168, 169, 186, 194. 

Drum, the, 176, 195. 

Drummond, William, his education, 
241, 242; in London, 241; read- 
ing in English poets, 241; not an 
adventurer, 242; his loyalty, 242; 
at Hawthornden, 243; contrasted 
withjonson, 244; his bereavement, 
245; his love of Italian poetry, 
246; his entertainment of Jonson, 
244— 25 1; literary ideals of, 248, 
249; his Notes of Conversations, 
247, 248, 252; Jonson's opinion 
of, 250; letters of, to Jonson, 251, 
252. 

Dublin Castle, 65. 

Duel, the, 41, 42. 

Dulwich, 157, 160. 

Dumps, 175. 

Dutch, 9. 

Dutch wars, 43. 

Dyer, Sir Edward, 95. 

Eastward Hoe ! 46. 
Edinburgh, 228, 232-241, 243. 
Edward VI, 54, 93, 244. 
Edwards, Richard, 109. 
Elizabeth, her character and talents, 3- 
11, 79; and Parliament, 5, 6; 



learning of, 5, 8; and her Court, 5, 
7-9, 91, 92, 100; a contemporary 
portrait of, 8, 9; and the drama, 10, 
107, 109, 113; the progresses of, 
10-25; the age of, 30; and trade- 
ventures, 52; and Stucley, 57, 60, 
62, 63, 65-67, 73; and buc- 
caneering, 60-62; letter of Shane 
O'Neill to, 63; and Greville, 78- 
80, 83, 84, 91, 92; Greville' s remi- 
niscences of, 83, 84; champion of, 
87; negotiations for marriage of, 88; 
and the departure of Sidney and 
Greville from Court, 91, 92; her 
withdrawals of favor, 100; pro- 
jected marriage to Anjou, 1 00; and 
theatres, 107; allegorized in Endi- 
mion, 120; in the Arraignment of 
Paris, 120; and the Faerie 2>ueene, 
135; and music, 175, 176; at 
Gray's Inn, 209; Jonson's remark 
upon, 249. 

Embassy from Lubberland, An, 218. 

Emblems, 251. 

Endimion, 120, 121. 

Epiccene or the Silent Woman, 118, 
226. 

Epigram, 6, 184, 193. 

Epitaph on Salathiel Pavey, 119. 

Esk, the, 243. 

Essayes, Bacon's, 34. 

Essex, 33. 

Eugenia, 218. 

Euphues, 241. 

Euridice, 194. 

Eyases, little, 105-127. 

Eyre, Simon, 46. 

Exechias, 205. 



Ind 



ex 



Faerie £>ueene, The, 97, 99, 135. 
Falconbridge, 58. 
Falstaff, 38, 165-167, 180. 
Famous Victories of Henry V, They 

166. 
Fauns, 16. 

Faustina hath the fairer face, 184. 
Faust us, 162. 
Fencing-masters, 179. 
Ferel, 67. 

Ferrabosco, Alphonso, 195. 
Festivals, musical, 199. 
Fiddlers, 179. 
Field, John, 117. 
Field, Nathaniel, 11 6-1 18. 
Fife, the, 176. 
Fireworks, 16, 17. 
Fletcher, John, 82, 122, 156, 250. 
Florence, 194. 
Florida, 57, 61. 
Food, 20, 37, 38. 
Fortune Theatre, the, 155. 
Four Prentices of London, 52, 53. 
Fragmenta Regalia, 79. 
France, 8, 54, 55, 61, 64, 88, 100, 

135, 242, 246. 
French, 8, 100, 242, 246. 
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 141. 
Friendships, literary, 82. 
Frobisher, Sir John, 91. 
Fuller, Thomas, 61. 
Full fathom five my father lies, 185. 
Furniture, 33, 35—37- 

Galliard, the, 5. 

Garden, an Elizabethan, 33, 34. 
Garden of Delight, The Muses' ,191. 
Garter, Knights of the, 7. 



Gascoigne, George, 39-45, 97, 177. 

Gascoigne, Thomas, 94. 

Gawain, Sir, 20. 

Geliffes, 38. 

George a Greene, 141. 

Gesta Gray or urn, 209. 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 47, 53, 91. 

Giles, Saint, 29, 33. 

Glass panes, 35. 

Glass, Venetian, 36. 

Glees, 176. 

Godly Exhortation, A, 117. 

God's Gift, College of, 157. 

Gray's Inn, 108, 192, 208, 209. 

Greek, 8, 98, 99, 194, 250. 

Greene, Robert, 94, 131- 147. 

Greenwich, 7. 

Gregory XIII, 70-72. 

Gremio, 36. 

Grenville, Sir Richard, 47. 

Gresham, Sir Thomas, 3 1 . 

Greville, Fulke, his tomb, 77; his glory 
under Elizabeth, 79, 80; his dramas, 
80; his friendship with Sidney, 82- 
87; his Life of Sidney, 83; his part 
in tourney, 87-89; his attempt to 
sail with Drake, 9 1 ; celebrated with 
Dyer by Sidney, 95. 

Groatsworth of Wit, A, 1 31-147. 

Guilds, 108. 

Guy of Warwick, 179. 

Gyles, Nathaniel, 1 1 3-1 1 7. 

Hakluyt, Richard, 90. 
Hal, Prince, 121, 180. 
Hamlet, 105, 106, 141, 165. 
Hampton Court, III. 
Hanay, John, 177. 

59 



Index 



Harington, Sir John, 205. 
Harpers, 178. 

Harpsichord, the, 176, 196. 
Harrison, William, 37. 
Harvey, Gabriel, 94—99. 
Hathway, Richard, 167, 169. 
Having this day, my horse, my hand, my 

lance, 89, 90. 
Hawkins, Sir John, 31, 47, 53, 63. 
Hawthornden, 241—252. 
Henry II of France, 54. 
Henry IV, 180. 
Henry IV, 38, 165, 166. 
Henry V, 121, 164, 165, 167, 180. 
Henry V, 165. 

Henry V, Famous Victories of, 166. 
Henry VI, 163, 164. 
Henry VI, 163, 164. 
Henry VIII, 54, 58, 78, 93, 176, 

195. 
Henslowe, Philip, 154-170. 
Henslowe's Diary, 156—170. 
Hentzner, Paul, 7. 
Herrick, Robert, 240. 
Hertfordshire, 206. 
Hesse, Landgrave of, 188. 
Hexameter, 98. 
Hey wood, John, 93. 
Heywood, Thomas, 52, 53, 168. 
Higgs, Griffin, 209-219. 
High Street, 234. 
Highlands, the, 234, 235. 
History, 84, 94. 
Hobby-horses, 110. 
Hock-tide play, 19, 20. 
Holland, 9, 43. 
Holyrood, 233, 235. 
Homer, 170. 



Horace, 118. 

Houses, Elizabethan, 33—39, 233. 

Hox-Tuesday play, 19, 20. 

Humanism, 206. 

Hume, Tobias, 186, 190. 

Hunting, 16. 

Hunts-up, the, 175. 

Idron, 70. 

Ignoramus, 205, 206. 

Impress ee, 251. 

In praise of Music and Sweet Poetry, 

173, 184, 187. 
Inns of Court, 108, 192, 207-209. 
Inns used for theatres, 107, 203. 
Inquisition, the, 47. 
Instruments, 174, 176, 179, 180, 

189, I95-I97> 199- 
Interludes, 110, 114, 203, 211. 
Ira seu Tumulus Fortune, 216. 
Ireland, 31, 62-67, 69, 70, 73, 

135. 
Iris, 22-24. 
Isle of Dogs, 45. 
// was a Lover and his Lass, 187. 
Italian, 8, 242, 246. 
Italy, 8, 97, 98, 100, 132, 134, 

182, 185, 194, 242, 246, 247. 
Itys, 212. 

James I, 78, 79, 83, 156, 206, 223, 

224, 235, 241. 
Jew of Malta, The, 162. 
Jewes Garden, 33. 
John, Don, of Austria, 65, 68. 
John, Sir, Parson of Wrotham, 167. 
Jones, Inigo, 195, 249. 
Jones, Robert, 186, 189, 191. 
60 



Ind 



ex 



Jonson, Ben, relation of, in time to the 
members of the Areopagus, 97; and 
Field, 117, 118; plays of, cited, 
117, 118, 227; and Pavey, 1 1 8— 
1 20; wrote for boy companies, 122; 
payment of, as playwright, 168; 
and Henslowe, 168, 170; masques 
of, 195, 226; and Inigo Jones, 195, 
249; Ferrabosco, the composer for, 
195; and the courtly drama, 204; 
journey of, to the north, 223-252; 
Scotch ancestry of, 223; appearance 
and physical infirmities of, 225, 244, 
245; character of, 224, 232, 250— 
252; the position of, 225—227, 230, 
240, 245, 246; folio of, 225; and 
John Taylor, 228—230; purchases 
shoes, 231; at Leith, 236, 237; 
freedom of Edinburgh bestowed 
on, 237— 240; entertained by Drum- 
mond, 244— 25 1 ; wife of, 246; and 
literature, 246, 247; conversation 
of, with Drummond, 248-252; 
estimate of himself, 250; Drum- 
mond' s estimate of, 251. 

Jonson , An Ode for Ben, 240. 

Jonson* s Conversations with William 
Drummondy Notes of Ben, 248. 

Journey to the North, A, 223-259. 

Jove, 22. 

Julius Ccesar, 164, 165. 

Juno, 22-24. 

Juvenal, 144. 

Katharine, 121. 
Kavanagh, 67. 
Kenilworth, 1 2-2 5 . 
Kenny-hate, 233. 



Kenshlagh, 70. 

King John, 58. 

King Lear, 165. 

King's College, 205. 

Kinsale, 62, 67. 

Knight of the Burning Pestle, 122. 

Kyd, Thomas, 140, 142, 163, 164. 

Kynaston, Francis, 127. 

Lady of the Lake, 1 5 . 

Lafylond, 67. 

Lamb, Charles, 80, 8 1 . 

Laneham, Robert, 1 3-24. 

Languet, Stephen, 79. 

Latin, 5, 8, 16, 98, 108, 165, 192, 

205-207, 210, 211, 214-216, 

250. 
Lear, King, 165. 
Legge, Thomas, 205. 
Leicester, Earl of, 12—25, 64, 117, 

120, 140. 
Leinster, 67, 70. 
Leith, 235-237. 
Lennox, Duke of, 231. 
Lent, 209, 216. 
Lepanto, battle of, 68. 
Letter, Laneham's, 13-24. 
Lincoln, 33. 
Lisbon, 70. 

Lodge, Thomas, 94, 141, 144. 
Lomond, Loch, 232. 
Looking Glasse for London, A, 141, 

144. 
Love's Labour's Lost, 241. 
Lucre ce, 241. 
Luna, 215. 

Lute, the, 174, 180, 196. 
Lyly, John, 94, 120, 121,204,241. 
61 



Ind 



ex 



Lyric, the, 174-177, 181, 186, 189, 
192—194,200,225. See also Mad- 
rigals, Song. 

Machiavelli, 3, 80, 143. 

Madrid, 61, 69. 

Madrigals, 182-186, 188, 193, 247. 

Mar, Earl of, 235. 

Marenzio, Luca, 182. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 97, 120, 140, 

142, 143, 153, 162-164, l8l > 

204. 
Marriage portions, 33, 39. 
Mars, 16. 
Marshalsea, 159. 
Marston, John, 122, 170, 248. 
Martial, 118. 
Mary, Queen, 55. 
Mary Queen of Scots, 206. 
Masque, the, 10, 16, 109, ill, 152, 

194-200, 203, 204, 209, 211, 

216, 225, 226, 250. 
Masque at the Marriage of the Lord 

Hayes, 196. 
Masson, David, 236. 
May-day, 175. 
Menstrie, 243. 
Merchant, the, 30, 31, 39, 45-47, 

5*> 53- 
Merchant adventurers, 47, 51—63. 
Merchant of Venice, The, 1 64. 
Merchant Tailors' School, 113. 
Mercury, 22, 23. 
Mercutio, 179, 180. 
Mermaid at Kenilworth, the, 20. 
Mermaid Tavern, the, 169, 240. 
Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 165. 
Middleton, Thomas, 248. 



Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 17, 

185, 215, 241. 
Minstrels, 178-180. 
Miracles, 19, 108. 
Mirror for Magistrates, The, 93. 
Mock-fights, 16, 19. 
Moffat, 235. 

Monarchic Tragedies, 243. 
Monopolies, 47. 
Montaigne, 206. 
Moonshine, 215. 
Moralities, 10, 19, 108. 
Morley, Thomas, 174, 183, 185, 

186. 
Morocco, 52, 71. 
Morough, 70. 
Morris-dancing, 18, 211. 
Mountjoy, Lord, 92. 
Mummings, 203. 
Munday, Anthony, 167, 169. 
Murray, Sir William, 235. 
Musa Trans alpina, 181, 182. 
Music, 15, 16, 109, 114, 173-200. 
Musicians, 179, 180, 187, 188, 196. 
Music-teachers, 179. 
Mustapha, 80, 81. 
My true love hath my heart, 185. 

Nashe, Thomas, 141, 163, 205. 

Naunton, Sir Robert, 79. 

Neather Bow, 233. 

Neptune, 20. 

New Year's Day, 212. 

Newcastle, 230. 

Newington Butts, 155. 

Nichols, John, 1 1 . 

Nisbit, Sir William, 235, 240. 

Nodes Ambrosiante, 240. 



262 



Index 



Norwich, 134. 

Notes of Ben Jonson' s Conversations 
with William Drummond, 248, 252. 

O Love ! they wrong thee much y 190. 
O Sweet Content , 153. 
Ode for Ben Jons on, An, 240. 
Old For tuna t us, 153. 
Oldcastle, Sir John, 166, 169. 
O'Neill, Shane, 63, 64. 
Opera, the, 194, 199. 
Orations, 10. 

Oxford, 6, 11, 94, 108, 109, 203- 
219, 231. 

Pageants, 109, 203. 

Palestrina, 183. 

Pallas, 22. 

Palsgrave, John, 206. 

Pamphlet, the, 95, 135, 140, 152, 
163. 

Paris, 1 10, 241. 

Parliament, 5, 6. 

Passionate Pilgrim, The, 241. 

Pastoral, the, 100. 

Patient Grissil, 153. 

Pattersone, Alexander, 239. 

Paul's, children of, 108, no, 113. 

Paul's Walk, 51, 121. 

Pavey, Salathiel, 116, 118, 119. 

Pedantius, 205. 

Peele, George, 94, 120, 145. 

Pembroke, Earl of, 64. 

Penelope's Wooers, 216. 

Penny les Pilgrimage . . . of John Tay- 
lor, 228-230,232, 233, 235-237. 

Percy, 178. 

Peri, 194. 



Periander, 217. 

Petrarch, 181, 246. 

Pewter, 36. 

Philip II, 65, 68-73. 

Philomanthes, 215. 

Philomela, 177. 

Philosophus, 210. 

Philosophy, 94. 

Phoebus, 16. 

Pianoforte, the, 176. 

Piers Penniless, 163. 

Pipe, the, 179, 195. 

Piracy, 31, 47, 52, 60-63, 66. 

Pius V, 53, 68, 69, 73. 

Plain-song, 1 74. 

Plautus, 108. 

Playwrights, 136, 139-142, 151, 
158-170. 

Plymouth, 91. 

Poet at Kenilworth, the, 1 5 . 

Poetaster, The, 118, 120. 

Poetry, and Elizabeth, 10 ; of Gre- 
ville, 83 ; Sidney and the culti- 
vation of, 90, 94, 99, 100, 181, 
247; in Sidney's youth, 93, 94; the 
Areopagus and, 94-101 ; of Spen- 
ser, 135; and music, 173-200; 
Bacon's witticism on, and Jonson, 
224; of Jonson, 223-226, 247; of 
Taylor, 227, 228; of Drummond, 
246, 247; Jonson on certain poets, 
248-250. 

Polton, 244. 

Polyolbion, 167. 

Pomona, 16. 

Porters at Kenilworth, 1 5 . 

Portugal, 70. 

Posies, 177. 

63 



Ind 



ex 



Post of Leith, 237. 

Poulderings, 210, 214, 218. 

Prentices, 52, 53. 

Preston, 235. 

Prince, Christmas, 210, 212, 215 

216. 
Prince of Purpoole, 208, 209. 
Princeps, 210. 

Privy Council of Scotland, 235. 
Processions, 10. 
Progresses, 3-25, 43. 
Prologues, 123—126, 152, 212. 
Properties, stage, 109-111,158, 168 

169. 
Proteus, I 5 . 
Puppets, 203. 
Puritanism, 47, 134, 204. 
Purpoole, Prince of, 208, 209. 
Puttenham, George, 178. 

Quintain, 18. 

Radcliffe, Ralph, 206. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 4, 53, 187, 249 

Ralph Roister Doister, 205. 

Recorder, the, 174. 

Redcross Street, 29, 33, 40, 41. 

Religion, 86. 

Renaissance, the, 3, 247. 

Repentance, The, 133. 

Return from Parnassus, The, 123. 

Revels, Queen's, 109. 

Rhetoric, 94. 

Richard Cceur de Lion, 58. 

Richard III, 165. 

Richard III, 165. 

Richardus Tertius, 205. 

Romances, 179. 



Rome, 68, 73. 
Romeo, 165, 179. 
Romeo and Juliet, 165, 179, 180, 
241. 
, Rose Theatre, the, 155. 
Ross, 70. 

Rowley, Samuel, 170. 
Rusticus, 210. 

Sackbut, the, 196. 

Sackville, Thomas, 205. 

St. Andrew's, Norwich, 134. 
, St. Brice's Day, 19. 

St. Gyles, the clarke of, 214. 

St. John's College, Oxford, 209, 210, 
214. 

St. John's Day, 211. 

St. Mary's Church, Warwick, 77. 

St. Paul's, 108, 1 10, 113, 121. 

St. Saviour's, Southwark, 155. 

Salisbury, Earl of. See Cecil. 

Sapphics, 98. 

Savage men, 16. 

Saxony, 55, 140. 

Scarlotti, 183. 

Scenery, 168, 195, 200. 

Schlegel, 194. 

Schools, 78, no, 113, 117, 207. 

Scipio Africanus, 110. 

Scotch, 8. 

Scotland, 8, 63, 223-252. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 12. 

Scrivener, the, 32. 

Sebastian of Portugal, 70, 7 1 . 

Selden, John, 231. 

Seneca, 81, 243. 

Seras, 175. 

Serenades, 175. 
264 



Ind 



ex 



Sermon, an Elizabethan, 5. 

Seven Days of the Week, 214, 215. 

Shakespeare, William, and the Queen's 
progress, 1 3 ; works of, cited, 1 7, 
36, 38, 58, 105, 106, 122, 141, 
165, 179, 180, 185, 215, 241; 
relation in time to Sidney, 97; and 
the courtly drama, 121, 204; and 
the boy companies, 122 ; and the 
actor' s profession, 136; Greene on, 
141, 142, 145, 146; and Dekker, 
151, 154; his career, 151; the 
sonnets of, 153, 181 ; and Hens- 
lowe, 156, 164, 165; the Falstaff 
of, 165-167; payment of, 167; 
love for music, 174; song-books 
during the life of, 180; songs of, 
185, 187; and Beethoven, 200; 
read by Drummond, 241. 

Sharers, 158. 

Shepheardes Kalender, They 90. 

Shews, 87, 109, 211, 212, 216. 

Shoemakers Holiday, The, 46 . 

Shrewsbury School, 78. 

Shrove Tuesday, 216. 

Sibyls, 15. 

Sidney, Sir Henry, 64. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, and Elizabeth, 
4; schoolmate ofGreville, 78; trav- 
elled with Languet, 79; friendship 
with Greville, 82-101 ; life of, by 
Greville, 83-86, 91; Greville's 
tribute to, 85, 86; at the tourney, 
87-90; sonnet of, 89, 90; inter- 
ested in discovery and adventure, 
90, 91; plans to leave Court, 91, 
92; literature in the youth of, 93, 
94; at Oxford, 94; founded the 



Areopagus, 95-99; study of pros- 
ody, 99, 100; aims and achieve- 
ments in literature, 94, 99, 100, 
181,247; works of, 99, 100, 241 ; 
Defence quoted, 178; My true love 
hath my heart, 185. 

Sidney, Life of the Renowned Sir 
Philip, 83-86, 91. 

Silent Woman, The, 118, 226. 

Silver, 36. 

Simples, 34. 

Singing, 114, 174, 176. 

Sir John Oldcastle, First Part, 166, 
167. 

Sir Thomas Stucley, 59, 60. 

Sir Thopas, The Tale of 178. 

Skelton, John, 93. 

Slavery, 31, 46. 

Smerwick, 3 1 . 

Snuffers, a pair of, as a character, 2 1 4. 

Snug, 215. 

Somerset, Duke of, 54. 

Somnium Fundatoris, 214. 

Song-books, 180, 182, 183, 186, 191, 
192. 

Songs and song-writing, 10, 173-200. 

Sonnet, the, 40, 43, 100, 174, 181, 
247. 

Sophocles, 8 1 . 

South wark, 155. 

Southwell, Robert, 177, 249. 

Spain, 5, 8, 31, 52, 53, 61, 64-73, 
91, 100, 242. 

Spanish, 8, 31, 242. 

Spanish Tragedy, The, 163. 

Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 
80, 81. 

Spendthrift, the Elizabethan, 44. 

65 



Ind 



ex 



Spenser, Edmund, and Elizabeth, 4; 
and the Spanish invaders of Ireland, 
30, 31; at Cambridge, 94; corre- 
spondence with Harvey, 96; ex- 
periments in classical metres, 98, 
99; London in boyhood of, 107; 
the Faerie Queene of, 135; referred 
to in Barnfield's sonnet, 173, 188; 
supreme beauty of the poetry of, 
181; quoted by Jonson, 249. 

Spiggott, Good wife, 212. 

Spinet, the, 176. 

Stage, the, 216. 

Star-Chamber, the, 116. 

Starveling, 215. 

Steele Glas, The, 43. 

Stirling, 232. 

Stow, John, 33. 

Stuart, John, 236, 238. 

Stuart, Mary, 65. 

Stucley, Thomas, 51-73. 

Stucley, Sir Thomas , 59, 60. 

Stultus, 210. 

Such was old Orpheus' cunning, 185. 

Suffolk, Duke of, 54. 

Sun Tavern, the, 227. 

Sunday night, 215. 

Surface, Charles, 44. 

Surrey, Earl of, 94, 97. 

Swan Theatre, the, 155. 

Sycamore at Hawthornden, 244. 

Sylvanus, 16. 

Table, the, 20, 37, 38. 

Tabor, the, 195. 

Tacitus, 80. 

Take, O take, those Zips away, 185. 

Tarn bur laine, 140, 162. 



Taming of the Shrew, The, 36. 

Tapestry, 36. 

Tasso, 246. 

Tavern, the, 226, 227, 231, 240. 

Taylor, John, 227-230, 232, 233, 

235- 2 37. 
Temple, Inner and Middle, 108. 
Terence, 108. 
Thalia in Oxford, 203-219. 
Theatres, the, 107, 11 4- 116, 121, 

155-170, 216. 
Third Book of Ayr es, igz. 
Tilbury, 6. 

Tilting, 15, 16, 87, 88. 
Time's Complaint, 212-214. 
Timon of Athens, 165. 
Titus Andronicus, 164. 
Tobacco, as a character, 125. 
Tolbooth, the, 234. 
TottePs Miscellany, 93, 94. 
Touchstone (in Eastward Hoe /), 46. 
Tourney in 1581, 88. 
Tragedy, 194, 205, 216-218. 
Tragedy of Philomela, The, 211. 
Translation, 225. 
Triple Tun Tavern, the, 227. 
Triton, 20. 
Triumph, a, no. 
Trumpet, the, 15, 176, 195. 
Turkey, 68. 
Twelve Days, 211. 
Two Pastorals, 95, 96. 
Tybalt, 179. 

Udall, Nicholas, 205. 

Universities, 6, 11, 94, 108, 132, 

203-219, 231, 235, 241. 
Usury, 47. 
:66 



Ind 



ex 



Venus, 22, i 20. 

Versification, 93, 94, 98—100, 192, 

224. 
Vigilate on Candlemas Night, 215, 

216. 
Viol de gamboys, the, 174. 
Violin, the, 196. 
Virginals, the, 176, 187. 
Virginia, 91, 135. 
Voyages, Hakluyt's, 90. 

Wagner, 200. 

Walsingham, Sir Francis, 4, 70. 

Walthamstow, 32, 42, 44. 

War of the Theatres, the, 121. 

Warwick, 77. 

Warwick Castle, 78. 

Warwickshire, 1 2-2 5 . 

Watson, Thomas, 94. 

Waver ley No vels, 168. 

Weavers, 175. 

Westcot, Sebastian, no. 

Westminster School, no, 113, 117. 

Wexford, 70. 



When Music and Sweet Poetry agree, 

173-200. 
Whitsuntide, 88. 
Whittington, Sir Richard, 52. 
Will, An Elizabethan, 29-47. 
William the Silent, 79. 
Wilson, John, 186. 
Wilson, Robert, 167, 169. 
Windsor, 1 10, 180. 
Woman Killed with Kindness, A, 168. 
Women-actors, 127. 
Worthies of England, 61. 
Wotton, Sir Henry, 249. 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 94. 
Wykes, 33. 

Yong, Nicholas, 181, 182. 
York, 230. 

Tule-tide Melody of Christmas Sports, 
215. 

Zabeta, 22, 23. 

Zabeta, Masque of, 21-24. 



267 



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